Olympic Dam (100% owned)

"The Company's largest Australian geothermal prospect, with massive Inferred Resources of geothermal energy, situated next to a potential major customer and the national power grid."

Our Objective

To develop a 400 MWe power plant at Olympic Dam to provide 60 per cent of South Australia's 2020 renewable energy target.

The Project

The Olympic Dam Geothermal Energy Project is a wholly owned Green Rock Energy Limited project, located in central South Australia.

Green Rock Energy holds 2,233 km² of Geothermal Exploration Licences (GELs) over buried hot granites in the area surrounding BHP Billiton's Olympic Dam copper and uranium mine. An area of 650 km² holds estimated inferred resources of 120,000 PJ of heat in place. In their report of the estimated inferred resources Sinclair Knight Merz (SKM) noted that less than 3% of this storred heat needs to be recovered to generate a constant 400MW of electricity over a 30 year project life.

This project is situated on what the Company believes to be the most economically prospective hot dry rock, geothermal energy ground in Australia.

Location

The Olympic Dam Geothermal Energy Project is an ideally located, commercially attractive, geothermal energy project, with access to major markets.

Located within 10 kilometres of BHP Billiton's Olympic Operations, a large electricity user, and only five kilometres from an existing high voltage transmission line which is connected to the Eastern Australian power grid.

ACTIVITIES

Last year we reported Sinclair Knight Merz's (SKM) estimate of inferred geothermal resource of 120,000 PJ of heat contained in granites within an area of 460 sq kms which is about 15% of the total area of our geothermal licences at Olympic Dam. The geothermal resources are located on the door step of the world class Olympic Dam mine and next to a high voltage transmission line connected to the national power grid at a location where the project can be developed in stages as drilling progresses.

In their report SKM noted that less than 3% of this storred heat needs be recovered to generate a constant 400 MW of electricity over a 30 year project life. The granite body hosting the inferred geothermal resources has been intersected at nearly 2 kilometers deep in the exploratory well Blanche No 1 in which a hydro-fracturing program has successfully shown that fractures can be opened in the hot granite. Green Rock Energy views this resource estimate as a partial estimate as work outside the 460 sq km shows there is potential to add substantially more geothermal energy resources.

Subsequent modelling of surface heat flows from holes drilled into the granite body within the Company's licence areas to the east of the Olympic Dam mine but outside of the 460 sq km area showed similar elevated surface heat flows as found in Blanche No 1 drilled into granite on the west side of Olympic Dam. High heat flows ranging from 85mW/m² to 100mW/m² were determined from the new measurements. This has pointed to a more extensive heat potential in our permits than represented by the inferred geothermal resource within the 460 sq km but as yet no estimate of any geothermal resources has been made outside this 460 sq km area.

The next step to commercially exploit the energy from the inferred geothermal resource at Olympic Dam requires us to first prove the deliverability of the heat resources. We plan to do this by drilling an injection well and a production well into the hot reservior rocks and pumping water underground to recover the heat from the granites in the Blanche No 1 area near the western side of the Olympic Dam mine and processing plants.

The Company has completed the bulk of the necessary field work it needs for this drilling. Before commencing the drilling we need to secure a joint venture partner to assist with funding this work