Heat flow and hot dry rock geothermal resources of the Clearlake Region, northern California

Abstract

The Geysers-Clear Lake geothermal anomaly is an area of high heat flow in northern California. The anomaly is caused by abnormally high heat flows generated by asthenospheric uplift and basaltic magmatic underplating at a slabless window created by passage of the Mendocino Triple Junction. The Clear Lake volcanic field is underlain by magmatic igneous bodies in the form of a stack of sill-form intrusions with silicic bodies generally at the top and basic magmas at the bottom. The tabular shape and wide areal extent of the heat sources results in linear temperature gradients and near-horizontal isotherms in a broad region at the center of the geothermal anomaly. The Hot Dry Rock (HDR) portion of The Geysers-Clear Lake geothermal field is that part of the geothermal anomaly that is external to the steamfield, bounded by geothermal gradients of 167 mW/m2 (4 heat flow units-hfu) and 335 mW/m2 (8 hfu). The HDR resources, to a depth of 5 km, were estimated by piece-wise linear summation based on a sketch map of the heat flow. Approximately, the geothermal {open_quotes}accessible resource base{close_quotes} (Qa) is 1.68E+21 J; the {open_quotes}HDR resource base{close_quotes} (Qha) is 1.39E+21 J; and the {open_quotes}HDR power production resource{close_quotes} (Qhp) is 1.01E+21 J. The HDR power production resource (Qhp) is equivalent to 2.78E+ 11 Mwht (megawatt hours thermal), or 1.72E+11 bbls of oil.