I’m a petroleum engineer from North Dakota. I came up in an industry that learned how to extract an enormous American energy resource we knew was there — but could not economically produce — and unlock it at a scale few thought possible.
The shale revolution did not happen because America suddenly discovered oil and natural gas. It happened because American engineers, geoscientists, entrepreneurs and energy workers combined horizontal drilling, hydraulic fracturing, subsurface characterization and reservoir engineering to produce those resources economically and at scale.
I had the privilege of being part of that revolution.
What followed changed our nation. American oil and natural gas production surged, moving us from concerns over scarcity and import dependence to energy abundance and exports. Affordable, reliable American energy strengthened our economy, communities and national security.
Today, America is being called on to do it again.
Unlocking the next energy revolution
A surging economy requires a surging supply of electricity — reliable, affordable, secure and produced here at home. One of the most promising resources available to meet that challenge has been beneath our feet all along: heat.
And in Utah, we are learning how to unlock it.
Outside Milford, the U.S. Department of Energy’s Utah Frontier Observatory for Research in Geothermal Energy (FORGE) has become America’s premier field laboratory for enhanced geothermal systems, or EGS. FORGE allows researchers and companies to drill wells, stimulate rock, characterize reservoirs, test technologies and solve the engineering challenges necessary to turn underground heat into commercial electricity.
For a petroleum engineer, what is happening at FORGE looks familiar.
The subsurface does not give up its resources easily. You must understand the geology, drill efficiently, create productive fracture networks, manage fluid flow and heat transfer, and continuously reduce cost and technical risk.
We have solved hard subsurface problems before.
Horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing transformed oil and natural gas formations once considered uneconomic into some of the world’s most consequential energy resources. Enhanced geothermal presents a similar opportunity. Instead of unlocking hydrocarbons, we are engineering reservoirs to access tremendous heat beneath the United States and bring that energy to the surface as reliable electricity.
The resource is enormous. The challenge is making it economic at scale.
FORGE is helping do that by improving drilling performance, testing stimulation designs, studying fracture behavior and reducing technical risk. Next door, the transition from research to commercial deployment is already taking shape.
Fervo Energy’s Cape Station project in Beaver County is applying technologies with deep roots in America’s oil and gas industry to geothermal development. DOE has supported Fervo research and selected Cape Station for an EGS pilot demonstration. The project is expected to ultimately produce 500 megawatts — enough electricity to power roughly 365,000 homes.
That progression matters. Research identifies problems. Engineers test solutions. Demonstrations prove what works. Private capital follows results. Companies scale technology. American workers build infrastructure.
That is how shale became an energy revolution, and it is how next-generation geothermal can become a major source of American electricity.
The opportunity extends far beyond Utah.
America already leads the world in installed geothermal electricity-generating capacity, but geothermal has too often been relegated to the energy “other” bucket — valuable, but assumed to remain a small part of our electricity mix.
We are focused on changing that.
DOE analysis indicates next-generation geothermal could provide hundreds of gigawatts of reliable, affordable and flexible electricity.
America does not need an energy transition built around taking reliable energy off the grid. We need energy addition.
We need more natural gas. More nuclear. More geothermal. More coal. More hydropower. More of every affordable, reliable, secure American energy resource that can strengthen our economy and energy security.
Geothermal can produce electricity around the clock with a small surface footprint and no dependence on imported fuel. The heat is beneath American soil, and much of the technology, expertise, supply chain and workforce needed to unlock it already exists here.
Government’s role is to bring laboratories, universities, researchers and industry together to solve technical problems, demonstrate emerging technologies, and reduce early deployment risk. Industry must then commercialize what works, attract private capital, lower costs, and build at scale.
That is why DOE’s Hydrocarbons and Geothermal Energy Office is launching a Geothermal Center of Excellence in Golden, Colorado, bringing national laboratory capabilities closer to industry and focusing research on the barriers to gigawatt-scale deployment.
FORGE demonstrates the approach: drill. Test. Measure. Learn. Improve. Then do it again — faster and cheaper.
That mindset helped unleash the shale revolution. Now another tremendous American resource is waiting.
America’s growing economy is calling for more electricity. We will answer with American resources, American technology and American workers.
Now it is time to take geothermal out of the “other” bucket, unlock the tremendous heat beneath our feet, and turn it into affordable, reliable, secure, gigawatt-scale American power.