15/06/2026
Millions of abandoned oil wells drilled across Texas are now becoming clean geothermal power plants.
Scientists at Southern Methodist University and Fervo Energy completed a technical and economic assessment confirming that over 3 million abandoned oil and gas wells in the Permian Basin and Gulf Coast regions of Texas could be repurposed as geothermal heat exchangers, with modeled energy output equivalent to over 5,000 megawatts of installed capacity — sufficient to supply continuous clean electricity to approximately 4 million homes without drilling a single new borehole.
Oil and gas drilling penetrates deep rock formations where temperatures increase with depth at the natural geothermal gradient — approximately 25 to 30 degrees Celsius per kilometer. Wells drilled to oil production depths of 3 to 5 kilometers already intersect rock temperatures of 100 to 150 degrees Celsius. By retrofitting these existing boreholes with closed-loop heat exchange systems — circulating water down one pipe and returning heated fluid up another — their thermal energy can be extracted and converted to electricity using organic Rankine cycle turbines at surface level.
Abandoned wells represent a major environmental liability in Texas — leaking methane, contaminating groundwater, and creating subsidence risks across hundreds of thousands of square kilometers of former oil field land. Repurposing them as geothermal assets converts an environmental cleanup obligation worth billions of dollars into a clean energy asset generating revenue for decades, while providing baseload renewable power precisely in the oil and gas heartland where the energy transition faces its greatest cultural and economic resistance.
Source: Southern Methodist University, Fervo Energy, US Department of Energy, Geothermics, 2024
