Geothermal Insight: Oil & Gas Coproduction

I've been learning a lot about Enhanced Geothermal Systems lately and it's a pretty novel concept: All you do is send in high pressure water with chemicals to fracture, or "frack", the ground, where the water can permeate the cracks. From there the water will heat up due to the intense heat and pressure of the earth. All that is needed to tap this energy is essentially creating a heat exchange where the heated water is sent up a pipe to a, usually binary, turbine which will create power. Then I got to thinking. Why not, at the end of an oil and gas fields' life, use existing depleted oil and gas fields that are already there to start the enhanced geothermal process? Turns out, this concept has already been thought of! It's known as Oil & Gas Coproduction. I read an article that provided some pretty revealing information. "Much of the 25 billion barrels of this geothermally heated 'wastewater' produced at oil wells each year in the U.S. is hot enough to produce electricity. It is estimated that many of the wells might have clean energy capacities of up to 1 MW."As you can see, this will benefit oil and gas companies' image while allowing geothermal companies to use existing oil and gas infrastructure. Here's an excellent video on understanding Enhanced Geothermal Systems.

The Department of Energy has provided a fact sheet for the Rocky Mountain Oil Field Testing Center (RMOTC) which has provided insight on real-world application. As is becoming evident, solutions like this are a welcome piece of the puzzle in providing cheap, clean, and abundant energy for the planet for generations.