Solar Power Helps Pump Oil

      Built by GlassPoint Solar, a Fremont company that uses renewable power to squeeze oil from the ground, a new solar steam plant has been developed in the Middle East, specifically the Omani desert. GlassPoint Solar, raising approximately $32 million in venue capital, has a small pilot plant in Kern County that has been generating steam for two years. Known as the Oman plant, it is 27 times bigger than the relatively small pilot plant, producing a average of 50 tons of steam per day.
       "Oman doesn't have the massive oil reserves of some of its neighbors, and its production started declining more than 10 years ago," said John O'Donnell, GlassPoint's Vice President of Business Development. "Steam-flooding an old field can help boost production. Plus, Oman has heavy oil deposits that are hard to develop without steam." O'Donnell added, "most steam-flooding operations burn natural gas to generate the steam, but Oman doesn't have large gas reserves of its own. And the price of importing it is high, more than three times its current cost in the United States."
         GlassPoint's technology is a low-cost twist on the conventional display of solar power plants in the past. GlassPoint's mirrors are made from thin, lightweight and inexpensive aluminium sheets. A decent breeze could knock the mirrors out of alignment so GlassPoint has them inside of glass greenhouses. Most of the materials can be bought from shelves from many suppliers. "Solar will be, by far, the cheapest way of complying with the standard," O'Donnell said. "As that develops, obviously we'll be keenly interested. We're a California company."

GlassPoint Solar