Geothermal Energy Uses Same Drilling Rigs & Fracking as Gas Wells
You can’t read about energy in mainstream media these days without seeing multiple stories about geothermal energy and the big push to force-convert homes and businesses to use geothermal as a way of saving the planet from nasty/evil fossil fuels. Yet geothermal uses the same identical drilling rigs, drills the same holes in the ground, and even uses the same fracking technology as that used to drill shale oil and gas wells. But drilling and fracking for geothermal is righteous and clean and pure as wind-driven snow, while drilling and fracking for oil and gas is evil, Satanic, and destroying the environment. How does that work?
Continue reading
Only in the mind of twisted leftists does this make sense. New York State is energy-hungry. Yet our state “leaders” demand we begin to phase out the one source of energy that provides something like 90% of all energy in the state: Natural gas and oil. You have to replace all that energy somehow. The answer for home heating, in the minds of leftists, is to drill geothermal wells. The state is *requiring* the state’s seven largest utilities to launch at least one geothermal project (and up to five such projects) to get the ball rolling. So here’s what happens. Instead of a gas driller drilling one well that produces enough energy for thousands of surrounding households, geothermal drillers must drill hundreds of wells (400 in our example below!) to produce enough energy for a few dozen households, plus some businesses. Same darned hole in the ground, yet if it’s for natural gas or oil drilled in the countryside where nobody sees it, it’s Satanic. But, drilling several hundred of the same holes in the ground for geothermal — in densely populated urban neighborhoods — is angelic. How do you figure, New York State?
Last November MDN told you about a research paper published by Penn State that says the state should look at repurposing old conventional oil and gas wells for use as geothermal energy sources (see 
As far back as July 2021, MDN began to cover the issue of geothermal energy, which uses the same technology (drilling rigs, horizontal drilling) to drill holes in the ground to circulate and warm (or cool) water underground as a “green” energy source. Geothermal is an area of interest for Marcellus/Utica shale drillers as a potential new source of revenue (
We spotted a press release from an energy company that works in New York State called 
Marcellus driller Northeast Natural Energy (NNE) has begun to drill a geothermal and carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) data collection well, all the way down to 15,000 below the surface (see