Geothermal Plays of the Middle East: Cost and Evidence

The Middle East and the Afar margin are bounded by an active oceanic rift, a continental transform and a collision zone, their margins hold wells above 260 °C, and demand for cooling, desalinated water and firm power grows every year. The geology has been described many times, but the published resource estimates were made site by site on incompatible conventions: recovery factors of 0.02 or 0.2, conversion efficiencies from 0.26 to 0.9, project lives of 20 to 50 years, and reservoir temperatures that for one site differ by up to 64 °C between studies. A planner cannot tell from that record whether a volcanic field, a granite, a fault-controlled spring system or a depleted oilfield is the better place to spend the first drilling budget.

Geologic® prepared a critical review that assembles the evidence by geological play rather than by country, from a documented search of 4,023 records screened against written criteria with an independent second pass, grades it on a five-level scale, examines it for internal consistency, and then puts it on one quantitative basis built only from published inputs. Heat in place per square kilometre is computed for five cases, and levelised cost for nine under three drilling cost scenarios. The result separates the options cleanly. Power is competitive only where wells have already found heat and flow, at USD 48 to 67/MWh and USD 63 to 92/MWh in the two drilled volcanic fields (P10 to P90, at default well costs). The same resources that fail as power deliver heat from new well pairs at a median of USD 18 to 36/MWh, possibly low by up to a factor of two and resting on design flows no test in the region has confirmed, but within the range of district heating elsewhere even if doubled. In every undrilled play the controlling unknown for power is a temperature that one slim hole would measure, and published well costs for the region differ by a factor of 3 to 4, which in the granite and basin cases shifts results more than any geological uncertainty does.