Geothermal:
Abundant. Secure. Reliable.
DO GOOD.
AT SCALE.
“Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.”
George Bernard Shaw
After leading multiple successful oil and gas programs across the country, Raptor’s founders Jason Perkins and Dustin Faulkner had a choice to continue on the path that made them successful or do something different. With money from their most recent exit, they chose something very different than drilling for oil and natural gas; they planted trees.
We changed our minds in 2016.
Raptor has never done things in miniature. Instead, when a decision is made, it is done at a commercial scale.
Applying world-class technical acumen to large-scale projects made them successful in the energy business. So, when Dustin and Jason decided to go into agriculture, it was no surprise they went big. Raptor Ag quickly became recognized as an industry leader with the largest hazelnut operation in the United States and more pecan trees that anyone else in the state of Oklahoma.
“Choose your corner, pick away carefully, intensely, and to the best or your ability and in that way,
you might change the world.”
Charles Eames
That wasn’t enough.
For a company with decades in the energy business, energy was never far from our minds.
Raptor Geothermal was formed in a whirlwind of action. The technical team that had proven itself among the greatest in the world in the production of petroleum immersed themselves in finding, understanding, and developing a new source of energy underground. We studied reservoir characteristics and geologic parameters. What did we come up with that makes Raptor Geothermal different? Widely available baseline green energy; scalable, commercial, and ready for market.
Raptor Geothermal is ready.
History of Geothermal Energy
Archaeological evidence shows that the first human use of geothermal resources in North America occurred more than 10,000 years ago with the settlement of Paleo-Indians at hot springs. The springs served as a source of warmth and cleansing, their minerals as a source of healing. While people still soak in shallow pools heated by the earth, engineers are developing technologies that will allow us to probe more than 10 miles below the earth's surface in search of geothermal energy. We invite you to study the timeline of the recent history of geothermal energy in the United States.
1807
As European settlers moved westward across the continent, they gravitated toward these springs of warmth and vitality. In 1807, the first European to visit the Yellowstone area, John Colter, probably encountered hot springs, leading to the designation “Colter’s Hell.” Also in 1807, settlers founded the city of Hot Springs, Arkansas, where, in 1830, Asa Thompson charged one dollar each for the use of three spring-fed baths in a wooden tub, and the first known commercial use of geothermal energy occurred.
1979
The first electrical development of a water-dominated geothermal resource occurs, at the East Mesa field in the Imperial Valley in California. The plant is named for B.C. McCabe, the geothermal pioneer who, with his Magma Power Company, did field development work at several sites, including the Geysers. DOE institutes funding of direct-use demonstration projects. Among the beneficiaries of this effort are several office buildings, district heating systems, and agribusiness.
2013
The Desert Peak project completes an 8-month multi-stage stimulation of an existing but underperforming well, successfully validating fluid injection and stimulation increases to levels within the magnitude of a commercial well, and dramatically increasing flow rate. This project is the first EGS project in America to generate commercial electricity by providing an additional 1.7 MW at the existing well-field. In April, a DOE investment deploys a project that takes advantage of close-looped geothermal power generation-as a thermal byproduct of gold mining-to generate essentially emission-free electricity for less than 6 cents/kwh. This patented plug-and-play technology is the first in the nation to employ cost-free geothermal brine at a mine operation and the technology has the potential for extremely broad application in many parts of the country, including oil and gas operations, establishing a commercially deployable clean energy enterprise.
History of Geothermal Power
Geothermal power is electrical power generated from geothermal energy. Technologies in use include dry steam power stations, flash steam power stations and binary cycle power stations. Geothermal electricity generation is currently used in 26 countries,[1][2] while geothermal heating is in use in 70 countries.[3]
As of 2019, worldwide geothermal power capacity amounts to 15.4 gigawatts (GW), of which 23.9% (3.68 GW) are installed in the United States.[4] International markets grew at an average annual rate of 5 percent over the three years to 2015, and global geothermal power capacity is expected to reach 14.5–17.6 GW by 2020.[5] Based on current geologic knowledge and technology the Geothermal Energy Association (GEA) publicly discloses, the GEA estimates that only 6.9% of total global potential has been tapped so far, while the IPCC reported geothermal power potential to be in the range of 35 GW to 2 TW.[3] Countries generating more than 15 percent of their electricity from geothermal sources include El Salvador, Kenya, the Philippines, Iceland, New Zealand,[6] and Costa Rica. Indonesia has an estimated potential of 29 GW of geothermal energy resources, the largest in the world; in 2017, its installed capacity was 1.8 GW.
Geothermal power is considered to be a sustainable, renewable source of energy because the heat extraction is small compared with the Earth's heat content.[7] The greenhouse gas emissions of geothermal electric stations average 45 grams of carbon dioxide per kilowatt-hour of electricity, or less than 5% of those of conventional coal-fired plants.[8]
As a source of renewable energy for both power and heating, geothermal has the potential to meet 3-5% of global demand by 2050. With economic incentives, it is estimated that by 2100 it will be possible to meet 10% of global demand with geothermal power.[6]
