Germany’s largest producer of crude oil and natural gas Wintershall will provide warm water and heating generated by geothermal power in a municipal water park located in Landau, Germany.

 

The energy will be generated from a former crude oil reservoir 1,100 meters underground in which 22,000 liters of water per hour circulate within a closed loop. “The decommissioned production site “La44” is one of 75 wells operated by our company here in the Landau region,” Dr. Thomas Ruttmann, Head of Wintershall’s operations at Landau, explains. However, technical modifications will have to be made before the crude oil well can be used for geothermal power: in future the heated water will be pumped to the surface via the tubing string at “well La44”. A heat pump and four heat exchangers will then supply the leisure pool, which is just 500 meters away, via a district heating pipe. “This cooperation will provide us with over a million kilowatt hours of environmentally friendly energy a year,” Thomas Hirsch, Managing Director of Stadtholding Landau in der Pfalz GmbH, the operating and holding company of the town, explained.

 

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