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Naknek Electric Association
permitting first geothermal well; up to 6 wells over 3 years
Naknek Electric Association has applied for an Alaska Coastal Management Plan consistency review for its planned geothermal drilling program about five miles northeast of King Salmon, at the eastern end of the Alaska Peninsula. NEA plans to drill an initial exploration well, the Naknek-G No. 1, to a depth of up to 14,000 feet at the beginning of August, with the drilling expected to take about 100 days to complete. The well location is township 17 south, range 44 west, section 14 of the Seward meridian.
NEA hopes to drill up to six wells over a three-year period to locate and evaluate a source of geothermal energy that might eventually generate power for as many as 30 communities in the Naknek region, a region that has been hit by escalating fuel prices in recent years.
Test wells drilled Donna Vukich, NEA’s general manager, said in May that a $2.9 million U.S. Department of Energy grant secured by Sen. Ted Stevens and other members of the Alaska congressional delegation would in part fund this summer’s well, with NEA providing the remainder of the $12 million required. Vukich said the utility had already done extensive geophysical work and drilled test wells to 400 feet.
In 2007 Vukich told Petroleum News that bottom-hole temperatures had been found to be in the 250 to 300 degrees Fahrenheit range at depths of about 12,000 feet in oil exploration wells at the eastern end of the Alaska Peninsula, a region noted for volcanic activity. Those temperatures would be conducive to the operation of a binary geothermal system, a system in which geothermal fluid vaporizes a lower-boiling-point fluid such as a refrigerant, with vapor from the lower-boiling-point fluid then driving a turbine powered electricity generator, Vukich said. The operation of a binary geothermal system for electricity generation has been successfully demonstrated at the Chena Hot Springs Resort in interior Alaska.
Fractures associated with a major regional fault, the Bruin Bay fault, could provide conduits for the passage of subterranean geothermal water in the area of the Naknek exploratory drilling, Vukich said.
—Alan Bailey
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