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Show 3sjdU h fe That is, it belonged to all on a first come, first serve bases under administration of the state engineer. There had been a move in the Legislature to treat geothermal water and steam as a mineral, like oil and gas. Certainly, geothermal could be defined as hot water wat-er - above 250 degrees F -or steam, contends Mr. Fisher. California treats geothermal geother-mal water sources as a mineral. min-eral. Development there has been much quicker. Geothermal has been used round the workd for years as a, power source in Italy, Iceland, New Zealand, and the U.S. The worlds largest lar-gest source is near San Francisco, and has a potential poten-tial of nearly 1,000 megawatts. mega-watts. UP&L's Huntington plant alone has a combined net capacity of 800 megawatts. Geothermal, like oil shale, tar sands, coal liquefaction and gasification,wind and Solar So-lar power has a way to go. A small flap developed when Milton Fisher, president presi-dent of the NY investment banking house of A.D. Gil-hart, Gil-hart, told Utah Department of Natural Resources Director, Di-rector, Gordon Harmston, that Utah was now smothered smother-ed by water filings which includes geothermal water or steam of one company com-pany (UP&L). That, he said, effectively precludes entry of any others oth-ers into the state. UP&L does not blanket the state, retorded UP&L vice president, Val Finlay-son. Finlay-son. And further, it would certainly make room for filings by any others. Finlayson said that Phillips Phil-lips holds the Roosevelt Springs water rights. Further, Fur-ther, UP&L has abandoned water rights it shared with Geothermal Kinetics in search of geothermal sources sour-ces in the Brigham City area. Fisher said state law on geothermal resources must be changed to encourage development. de-velopment. Namely, geothermal water or steam should be treated treat-ed as leasable mineral rights rather than a water right, with ownership determined deter-mined on first come, first serve basis, no matter the origin. The Utah geothermal law dates back to the early 1970s when the Legislature determined deter-mined that geothermal water or steam was to be treated like any other surface or subsurface water. from Salt Lake Tribune Geothermal energy still remains a drop in the bucket in the nation's and world's energy production. There is none in Utah. But that could change shortly with agreement between Utah Power and Light Co., and Phillips Petroleum Co. The two are still in negotiations nego-tiations for steam from Phillips Phil-lips geothermal leases in the Roosevelt Hot Springs area of Beaver County. Tentatively, UP&L would build a 20 megawatt plant. And, if that works, it will construct a 55 megawatt plant. Not much, but it's a start. The status of the deal -eight years in the making -surfaced at the annual meeting meet-ing of the Geothermal Resources Re-sources Council. |