Blowing a hole…

I read an interesting article the other day, with an admittedly tenuous connection with New Zealand.

Apparently an American company has filed a patent to harness geothermal energy with a new kind of drilling method. Experts agree that in most of the world it’s impossible to drill down deep enough to reach the hot stuff that we in New Zealand are lucky (or maybe unlucky) to have near the surface.
They’re talking up to 5km deep, which would require a huge machine and an impossibly long drill.

So instead they want to make what is in effect a giant airgun, and blast their way down.

Instead of slowly drilling through the rock, they want to use a machine called a ram accelerator, which is tantamount to being a gun with a ramjet mounted on the end of it.

The company which has registered the patent, HyperSciences, says you can bore a hole 10 times faster than traditional drilling equipment this way.

We in New Zealand already know that thermal energy is currently the most reliable source of clean energy, easily eclipsing solar, and even more efficient than hydro.

However, I’m not so sure I like the idea of people firing big guns towards the centre of the Earth. Don’t any of them watch the movies?

Having said that, the international president of Shell Oil has stated that the company is to continue drilling in Alaska because, he says, “oil will be required for a long time. Let’s take a look at developing our own resources, control how it’s done, and get all the benefits that go along with it”.

Well, I suppose he has a vested interest, but at least he’s consistent – which is more than a lobby in the UK which wants motorists to pay more for using renewable energy as their contribution to “saving the world”.

It’s been years since I studied economics, but I know that the best way to make sure people DON’T do something is to make it cost more. That’s the reasoning behind putting up the price of cigarettes, for example, and it’s certainly helping people to make the final decision to quit smoking.

As a petrolhead part of me thinks “yes, let them get on with that kind of thinking and leave the rest of us alone”.

But another part says we need to clean up the atmosphere, for the sake of our lungs if nothing else, and continuing to burn fossil fuels at the current rate is definitely not the answer!