Developing Hot Dry Rock Reservoirs with Inflatable Open Hole Packers

Abstract

An open hole packer system was designed for high pressure injection operations in high temperature wells at the Fenton Hill, Hot Dry Rock (HDR) Geothermal Site. The packer runs were required to verify that the HDR reservoir fractures had been penetrated during the drilling of well EE-3A. They were also used to stimulate fractures connecting EE-3A to the reservoir and to conduct two massive hydraulic fracture treatments at the bottom of EE-3A. An attempt to use a modified packer design as a temporary well completion system was not successful but with modification the system may prove to be an important HDR completion technique. The eleven packer runs have demonstrated the formation testing, stimulation and HDR reservoir development can now be conducted with an open hole inflatable packer operating over large temperature ranges and high differential pressures.