Record Details

Title Six Kilometers to Heat: Drilling, Characterizing and Stimulating the OTN-III EGS Well in Finland
Authors Peter MALIN, Tero SAARNO, Grzegorz KWIATEK, Ilmo KUKKONEN, Peter LEARY, Pekka HEIKKINEN
Year 2020
Conference World Geothermal Congress
Keywords EGS in Finnish basement rocks, hammer drilling, fracture characterization, hydraulic stimulation
Abstract In 2018 the Finnish company St1 objective Deep Heat Ltd completed the 1st phase of a 6.1 km deep EGS development on Aalto University’s Otaniemi campus. The I aim is to pilot test EGS district heating for the city of Espoo. This talk presents a summary of the project’s drilling, characterization, and stimulation of its 6.4 km MD injection well, OTN­III, which in 2019 is being followed by an equally deep, nearby production well. In 2015 St1 cored a 2.015 km OTN­I pilot hole to assess drilling and temperature conditions. Entirely in basement, it was extensively logged, establishing a gradient of ~18oC /km (at bottom, OTN­3 is ~120oC.) In 2016 air hammer drilling of production and injection wells began. A 1.8 km, 24­level seismometer chain was installed in OTN­1 for Drill Bit Seismic while OTN­2 was drilled to 3.325 km. OTN­3 was air hammered to 4.2 km, then water hammered to 4.5 km. OTN­III was then mud drilled to TD, deviating ~45o from 4.9 km, normal to the WNW­ESW stress maximum. Well logs show rock properties at OTN have power­law length scales and lognormal populations meaning a few large features dominate small local ones –be they electrical, elastic, or thermal one. Temperature profiles reveal numerous meter­scale, 0.1oC incursions, several decameter­long isothermals below 4000 m, and a remarkable 260 m long isothermal between 4770 and 5030 m. After reaching a measured depth of 6.4 km, the last open­hole 1260 m was completed with a stimulation assembly. The stimulation assembly consisted of 5 Stages of ball operated sleeves, separated by packers roughly 200 m apart. The Stages in the assembly were sequentially pumped in a 5 Phase program of seismic­activity controlled clean water injection. Including hours­-to-­days long rest periods, the stimulation lasted 47 days. It appears that due to either limited packer seal or near-well fractures all Stages and Phases were in partial communication with each other. Further, based on engineering data it appears that the Stage 2 sleeve did not operate properly and Phase 2 pumping is more closely associate with Stage 3. Thousands of microearthquakes were detected by a 3­tier Traffic Light System, none exceeding an M2.1 Red­light. Development at the project continued with a VSP for seismic velocity control, followed in 2019 by deepening of the OTN­II and stimulation to form an EGS doublet.
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