- After geological and geophysical field work has identified and investigated potential hydrothermal reservoirs, the associated derisking of this potential resource could support the decision to move to exploration drilling.
- Exploration wells would be targeted to gather detailed subsurface data (from sampling and geophysical measurements) not able to be obtained from surface fieldwork alone, including but not limited to the following:
- Stratigraphy
- Faults and fracture systems
- Lithologies and rock properties
- Temperatures
- Pressures
- Fluids and inflow zones
- These wells would also be used for flow testing including producibility and injectability. Multiple wells in an open system would rely on simultaneous thermal reservoir fluid production from some wells and injection back into other wells, and some amount of effective permeability would be involved to enable this reservoir performance.
- Developments may be able to preserve and utilise exploration wells for production operations, but sometimes there is a need to obtain more enthalpy (fluid mass flow and temperature), so larger diameter wells and casing strings may be required. In the case of slimhole exploration wells, they may be able to be preserved to be used as injection wells.
