International webinar tackles geothermal reuse of up to 200 gas wells in Mexico

On September 25, 2026, researcher Rodrigo Alarcon Flores, a member of the board of the Mexican Geothermal Association (AGM) and of UNAM's Institute of Engineering, will present in an international webinar the reuse of waste heat from Mexico's oil and gas wells, an inventory estimated at 100 to 200 high-flow wells in the country's southeast.

The session is part of the Focus on Geothermal series coordinated by Enerchange and ThinkGeoEnergy, and it brings Mexico's inventory of inactive wells as a geothermal asset to an international audience for the first time. The immediate precedent is the Latin America Geothermal Systems Workshop 2026 that AAPG held in Mexico City on September 2 and 3. At that forum, the Mexican Institute of Petroleum presented, together with Pemex, UNAM and INEEL, an analysis of 187 national fields: 78 reach temperatures of 90 °C or more and 39 are onshore fields with high viability for converting wells. The institution also identified five wells with bottomhole temperatures above 140 °C as candidates for generation tests.

The technical proposal avoids drilling. The well becomes a closed-loop coaxial exchanger: water is injected through the annulus and the fluid rises hotter through the production tubing, without contact with the hydrocarbon and without altering the integrity of the well. The webinar material details that the Veracruz, Tabasco and Chiapas basins record surface temperatures of 80 to 95 °C, while reservoirs such as Ixachi and Quesqui exceed 160 °C at depths greater than 7,000 meters. The heat feeds a cascade system: 500 kWe Organic Rankine Cycle (ORC) units generate electricity on site, and the remaining heat is directed to industrial food dehydration, absorption refrigeration and aquaculture. AGM presents the model as a replicable framework for rural economic diversification in mature basins.

The September 25 webinar, at 08:00 Mexico central time, is the next point of international exposure for the model. What to watch is the field test: the five wells with more than 140 °C that IMP identified are the candidates for ORC generation trials, a step before any commercial evaluation.

This article was written with the assistance of artificial intelligence from verified sources and reviewed by a human editor before publication.