GeothermalCOUNTRY UPDATE: SAUDI ARABIA

Vision 2030 is moving Saudi Arabia from a fossil-dominated system toward a diverse energy mix, with targets of about 130 GW of renewable capacity and up to about half of electricity from renewables by 2030, and national plans include about 1 GW of geothermal capacity by the early 2030s. Geologic® contributed to the 2020 to 2025 national geothermal country update, which reviews the Kingdom's resources, recent exploration and policy setting. The resources remain largely underexplored and are concentrated in the Arabian Shield along the Red Sea, where rifting, volcanic fields and radiogenic granites raise heat flow, with sedimentary basins in the centre and east as a broader, cooler resource.

Reservoir temperatures are generally low to medium enthalpy, about 50 to 150 °C, which suits direct use such as district cooling and desalination preheating more than large-scale power; sedimentary basins offer about 40 to 120 °C. Recent drilling has tempered expectations in places: drilling in Harrat Rahat, including three wells of about 1,000 m, recorded a modest gradient of about 23.6 °C per km and no active high-temperature reservoir at shallow depth, while modelling suggests unconventional systems there could reach MWe-scale capacity if wells go to about 6 km. The Kingdom still lacks a dedicated geothermal legislative and regulatory framework, use is limited to a few direct applications, and no large-scale commercial geothermal power plant is yet under construction.