Posted by Max Naylor on Wednesday, November 09, 2011
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| Iceland GeoSurvey’s well logging vehicle en route to Dominica |
The island of Dominica is among the world’s smallest island nations and is home to a population of 60,000. The companies came to an agreement with the country’s government on the drilling of three 1200 metre deep wells, environmental and geological surveying and associated work. The drilling machine Sleipnir, accompanied by a well logging vehicle and portable research facility, was sent to the island by ship last weekend. Drilling is set to commence at the end of the month.
“This will enable Dominica to save a considerable amount of money, since all of its electricity is currently produced with diesel oil, and it is therefore that we have been speaking about the fact that this project is so comparable to geothermal utilisation projects in Iceland,” said Daði Þorbjörnsson, a geologist at Iceland GeoSurvey. He is part of the team working on the project which is commencing today.
In terms of a timescale Daði said: “We hope that drilling will be completed in three to four months but the environmental surveying is expected to last up to a year.” Asked when we could expect the facility to become useable for electricity production, Daði was optimistic, “After drilling has been completed, we obviously need to test the boreholes for a period of time, but that will hopefully become clearer in the next six to eight months.”
Daði considers it likely that there are exploitable geothermal resources in the country: “There is considerable geothermal activity visible on the surface and we hope that this can be used for electricity production.”
Source: RÚV
Image: Iceland GeoSurvey
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