Assessing the Potential of Abandoned Oil and Gas Wells for Geothermal Heat Recovery in France

Around 12 000 boreholes have been listed in France according to an overview performed by INERIS (Lafortune, 2015, Lahaie and Bouffier, 2017). This paper describes the assessment study of abandoned oil and gas wells conversion for geothermal energy recovery. To that purpose, a multi-criteria analysis of key parameters is conducted to classify and grade wells according to their geothermal potential. The analysis accounts for surface information, parameters associated to the wells along with geological and geothermal properties (e.g. land use, existence of aquifers, temperature, transmissivity, depth reached, and drilling years). A case-by-case investigation is propose for a sample of high potential wells to ensure that all appropriate conditions are met to consider the conversion.