A pilot project from a team of oil industry veterans could save one of California's key clean energy resources from terminal decline.

On Thursday, energy company Greenfire announced that they had restored new life to a defunct well in The Geysers, the world's largest geothermal power station — and one that has been in a state of slow, decades-long collapse.

By means of technology that taps the heat from underground — rather than the rapidly-depleting water — the Greenfire team turned a well whose electric production had flatlined into a power producer.

That offers a potential lifeline to The Geysers, which currently generates about 630 megawatts of on-demand, carbon free electricity to Northern California — down from 2,000 megawatts in 1987.

"You can see these grey wells — they've been abandoned," said Rob Klenner, a former oil and gas engineer who is now Greenfire's chief executive, pointing to a diagram of the site where boreholes once funneled steam — heated by friction of the faults grinding beneath California — up to spin........

© The Hill