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Friday, May 05, 2006
Mt. Apo geothermal power plant cooling down
By Ben O. Tesiorna
DAVAO CITY -- The Mt. Apo geothermal power plant is in danger of being rendered useless if its reservoir cools down faster than designed.
This possibility was raised by Philippine National Oil Corporation (PNOC) president Paul A. Aquino in an interview Wednesday at PNOC's Mt. Apo Geothermal plant in Barangay Ilomavis in Kidapawan City.
In geothermal systems, production fluids are injected back into the reservoirs from which they are produced.
This has been deemed as the single most important factor determined by science and years of experience with geothermal power generation in conserving reservoir pressure and extending productive lives of geothermal systems.
Injectates, however, are always colder than reservoir fluids, thus returning production fluids will cool individual wells and entire reservoirs.
This re-injection process is then controlled so that the geothermal source can be tapped for a long period.
Aquino, however, said they have discovered that the hot water they are injecting back into their source is actually going back at a rate faster than they expected and at a lower temperature than the usual.
If left unchecked, then there is a possibility that the geothermal source would cool down.
"Then it becomes irreversible and it would be disastrous," Aquino said.
Internet entries show that the Tiwi geothermal plant, the country's oldest geothermal plant, encountered a major problem when there was a "massive influx of meteoric recharge" in the early 1980s. This, an Internet entry said, "drowned production in the initial development area."
A similar situation is becoming apparent at Mt. Apo. Aquino said it is for this reason that they have decided to drill outside the 701 hectare-area to remedy a possible disaster.
He added that while the drilling is outside the PNOC's 701-hectare production area, it is still within the energy support zone allocated to it in anticipation of such an event.
With the new hole it drilled, the PNOC hopes to prevent the cooling down of its geothermal source since the water it would be injecting back would be traveling longer, thus will be heated to a more suitable temperature once it reaches the source.
Aquino said the temperature of the water they inject is at 120 to 160 degrees while the suitable temperature at the source is between 200 to 250 degrees.
On another topic, Aquino expressed support to moves to privatize PNPC "for it to become competitive."
Aquino admitted that some government rules and regulations make PNOC very ineffective.
"It's not a question of law, it's a question of practicality. The practicality goes on two things, one is the government would not like to continue guaranteeing our loans. The only way we can do that is of course to privatize. The second one out of that practicality of getting the funds is also following the rules of the government. It's making us very, very uncompetitive. We are in a competitive business so being in a competitive business some government rules and regulations make us very ineffective. Because of that we have to be privatized," Aquino said. (Sun.Star Davao/Sunnex/With SAE)
(May 5, 2006 issue)
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