By Angela Macdonald-Smith
April 27 (Bloomberg) -- Geodynamics Ltd., the Australian company seeking to produce power from hot underground rocks, dropped by a record in Sydney trading after a blast at the Habanero-3 well at its project in South Australia.
Brisbane-based Geodynamics fell as much as 41.5 Australian cents, or 34 percent, to 81 cents and was at 86 cents at 10:16 a.m. in Sydney. The move compared with a gain of as much as 1.1 percent in the exchange’s benchmark index.
Water and steam are flowing from the well site near Innamincka after an incident at 8:30 p.m. local time April 24, Geodynamics said in a statement sent today to the Australian stock exchange. Tata Power Ltd., India’s biggest non-state electric utility and Origin Energy Ltd., Australia’s second- largest power and gas retailer, are Geodynamics shareholders.
Geodynamics said last month that tests at the Innamincka project, 30 percent owned by Sydney-based Origin, confirmed the generating system would work. The technique involves circulating water through cracked rock as deep as 5 kilometers (3 miles) underground, returning the heated water to the surface for conversion to steam to run a turbine.
Nobody was injured in the incident and the site has been secured, Geodynamics said. Well recovery experts have arrived at the site and are assessing the situation, said Managing Director Gerry Grove-White. The Dillons Highway has been temporarily redirected away from the site, he said.
The commissioning of a 1-megawatt pilot plant that Geodynamics has been building at the site has been suspended and it’s not certain when work will resume, the company said.
To contact the reporter on this story: Angela Macdonald-Smith in Sydney at amacdonaldsm@bloomberg.net
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment