Mazama Energy Inc. (Mazama) has announced that it has created the world’s hottest Enhanced Geothermal System (EGS), with a bottomhole temperature of 331 °C, at its pilot site in Newberry, Oregon. The company plans to proceed to a commercial project, targeting a 15-MW pilot in 2026 and further scaling to a 200-MW development.
Located within the Cascade Range, Newberry is one of the largest geothermal reservoirs in the U.S. and has been the site of pilot EGS projects in the past decades. In late 2024, Mazama announced the start of a demonstration project at the Newberry site to test the feasibility of creating a superhot enhanced geothermal system.
“With geothermal, you get global, round-the-clock energy that is carbon-free, cost-stable, and grid-independent,” said Sriram Vasantharajan, CEO of Mazama Energy. “Our team’s accomplishments expand the frontiers of geothermal power into significantly hotter and more heterogeneous rock regimes than ever before. The Newberry pilot provides a blueprint for unlocking baseload, utility-scale, carbon-free energy from the Earth’s crust worldwide, which is what the next generation of AI and cloud infrastructure requires.”
A showcase of innovative technologies
Mazama’s engineers first completed and stimulated a legacy well at Newberry to serve as the water injector. then successfully drilled a new, 10,200-foot (3100 meters) deviated producer well within six feet of its planned trajectory, thus achieving optimal alignment with the injector. Initial circulation tests and diagnostics confirm comprehensive connectivity between the two wells and the creation of the hottest-ever EGS.
Mazama’s team successfully deployed a spectrum of innovative technologies, including directional drilling, high-temperature well construction, and proprietary stimulation, to deliver performance under conditions far beyond traditional oil and gas industry limits. The team operated year-round at a remote, high-altitude site, with zero lost-time incidents.
During the technical demonstration, Mazama achieved:
- Peak drill penetration rates of 100 feet/hour (30.5 m/hr)
- Average 76 feet/hour (23 m/hr) across diverse rock types: granite, basalt, and granodiorite
- Record-breaking bit runs up to 2,760 feet (~841 meters) through volcanic formations
- Zero downhole failures of motors or measurement tools
- Well integrity and cement stability at ultra-high temperatures
At the heart of this success is Mazama’s proprietary Thermal Lattice™ stimulation, which is a patented process, purpose-built for enhanced geothermal environments. Building on conventional hydraulic fracturing, Thermal Lattice™ enables complex fracture creation and improved connectivity. The Newberry project also demonstrated the successful use of crosslinked fracturing fluid systems, sliding sleeves, chemical and nano tracers, and fiber-optic diagnostics for real-time fracture mapping and temperature monitoring.
Future plans
Mazama will next advance to commercial projects with horizontal wells, beginning with a 15 MW pilot in 2026 and then scaling to a 200 MW development project at Newberry.
The company will also extend its drilling into the SuperHot Rock regime (>400 °C range), leveraging proprietary high-temperature materials, cooling solutions and stimulation technologies. Harnessing SuperHot Rock resources will allow Mazama to extract up to 10x more power density, use 75% less water and drill 80% fewer wells than current approaches. Mazama aims to deliver terawatts of competitive and dispatchable power globally.
“This is a validation of an integrated development program that has successfully interconnected two slightly deviated wells and circulated a representative working fluid – a fulfillment of a vision from nearly fifty years ago to create a full scale EGS reservoir which was initiated by Los Alamos National Laboratory at Fenton Hill, New Mexico. This proof of concept opens the door to deeper and hotter opportunities at Newberry and beyond,” said Dr. John McLennan, Reservoir Management Lead at Utah FORGE.
Mazama Energy is pioneering Enhanced Geothermal Systems and SuperHot Rock technologies to deliver low-cost, dispatchable, and carbon-free power at a global scale. The company is incubated by Khosla Ventures and backed by Khosla Ventures and Gates Frontier.
Source: Mazama Energy via Globenewswire
