SHALLO-TEMP Surveys as a Potential Guide to Bidding for Geothermal Leases: A Case History at Coso

Abstract

In this paper we examine the results of the September 1981 Bureau of Land Management lease sale at the Coso KGRA in California. Parcels available for leasing were included in the Naval Weapons Center area (NWC) as well as in adjacent areas to the south and west. The bidders presumably based their offers on the geological and geophysical survey data that were available in the public domain for the NWC area. Since some $5 million were bid for parcels in adjacent area to the south and west, it is suspected that trends hinted at by the public domain data may have influenced companies to bid in this adjacent region. Among the data publically available was a SHALLO-TEMP survey, the interpretation of which was consistent with other independent surveys that pointed to a favorably geothermal resource in the NWC area. Prior t the bidding, an inexpensive but heretofore proprietary SHALLO-TEMP survey was conducted on the adjacent lands to the west and tied in with the original public domain survey. From a similar interpretation of the proprietary survey, whose results are divulged here, we conclude that the bidding might have been significantly different in the adjacent area to the west had these new data been considered.