Shallow geothermal holds enormous promise in the transition toward cleaner energy for buildings, offering a sustainable alternative to conventional heating and cooling systems. By tapping into the Earth’s relatively constant subsurface temperatures, these ground-source solutions can reduce building-related carbon emissions by up to 90 percent.
Yet, despite its potential, the sector faces pressing issues — particularly with regard to borehole deviations, boundary encroachments, and inadequate pressure testing. Let’s discuss how proven oil and gas (O&G) strategies, adapted for shallower depths and tighter budgets, can help address these challenges. We also highlight practical examples of bore collisions, property boundary disputes, and problems with simplistic pressure-testing methods, underscoring why the shallow geothermal industry must prioritize better data collection and verification.
Verticality Control and Bore Spacing
A core challenge in shallow geothermal projects is the precise placement of boreholes, which often need to be spaced 15–25 feet apart with bore lengths ranging from 600 to 850 feet. To maximize available space, many projects plan boreholes as close as 10–15 feet from property lines. In theory, these clearances should prevent well collisions and boundary violations. However, real-world execution reveals significant deviations, especially in hard rock formations where boreholes frequently veer off course by more than 10 percent of their total length.
The Elephant in the Room: Bore Collisions and Boundary Crossings. A collision occurs when one borehole intersects another, typically because of deviations exceeding the planned spacing. According to current industry statistics, at least 5 percent of boreholes collide during project execution. While such collisions pose direct problems —potentially damaging well materials and causing safety risks — they also indicate that boreholes are shifting more than 15–25 feet from their planned locations. This deviation increases the likelihood of crossing property boundaries, leading to legal and logistical challenges. For instance, if a borehole drifts 20 feet on a project with planned 15-foot spacing, it is almost certain that it will encroach on a neighboring property. The consequences of such boundary violations can be severe, including project delays, financial penalties, lawsuits, or even the abandonment of improperly placed wells.
A Widespread Issue. These risks are also not rare. Industry data suggests that more than 80 percent of boreholes in hard rock formations deviate by over 10% from their intended path. With such high deviation rates, it is nearly inevitable that some wells will encroach on adjacent bores or properties. Aside from legal ramifications, these deviations damage the trust and credibility that the geothermal industry needs to establish itself as a mainstream energy solution. This is particularly problematic in densely populated urban areas, where tight spacing constraints leave little room for error.
Practical Approaches: Post-Drilling Survey Tools. Although the oil and gas industry relies on advanced measurement-while-drilling (MWD) and steering systems, these are typically too expensive for shallow geothermal wells. Fortunately, simpler post-drilling survey tools can still help confirm the final borehole path without significantly inflating costs. By measuring the borehole’s position once drilling is complete, operators can verify that each bore remains within planned boundaries, identify collisions or near-collisions early, allowing corrective action or design adjustments for subsequent wells, and demonstrate compliance to property owners, municipal authorities, or regulatory bodies, thereby reducing the risk of disputes. Such surveys, even if rudimentary, provide tangible data to validate a project’s engineering plan and protect both clients and drilling contractors from potential legal or financial fallout.
Process Optimization and Logistics
Oil and gas operations thrive on efficient logistics, from rig mobilization to material handling. For shallow geothermal, although the budgetary scope is smaller, the benefits of disciplined planning and standardized procedures remain substantial. Multiple bores often must be drilled on a single project site, so disorganized or ad hoc drilling can quickly escalate costs and delay completion.
Standardizing Procedures. Using consistent bore diameters, drilling fluids, and heat-exchange loop materials, i.e. uniform well designs, simplifies inventory management and training. Sequencing activities, such as a well-choreographed schedule prevents idle drilling rigs, backlog of grout delivery, and overlaps in crew tasks. Each drilling step— spudding the bore, placing the loop, grouting — should slot cleanly into the next.
Continuous Improvement. Drawing on the oilfield mindset of rigorous performance tracking, each geothermal project can be an opportunity to refine techniques collecting data on drilling rates, grouting times, and materials usage, analyzing results to identify inefficiencies, and applying lessons on subsequent wells, gradually reducing non-productive time and improving cost-effectiveness.
By iterating and scaling, shallow geothermal can become more competitive with traditional HVAC systems, helping to expand its presence in both residential and commercial markets.
Verification at Every Stage
Modern O&G developments often employ real-time data monitoring, but shallow geothermal typically has shorter drilling intervals and tighter margins, making comprehensive data acquisition less feasible. Nevertheless, a balanced approach to digital verification can significantly enhance quality and system performance —particularly when it comes to pressure testing and flow verification.
Pressure Testing: The Flawed Status Quo. In many current projects, pressure testing of the borehole heat exchanger relies on two snapshot photos taken about five hours apart. While this method checks that the pressure remains stable between photo one and photo two, it provides only a rudimentary assessment and fails to capture the dynamic nature of fluid flow. This approach offers no real-time insight into potential pressure losses or temperature fluctuations, which are critical indicators of system performance and integrity.
Additionally, industry requires a so-called “flow test” to confirm that fluid can circulate through the loop. However, the real purpose of this test is more nuanced: it should measure the pressure drop across the loop at a set flow rate. This ensures that the pressure loss is not excessively high—an issue that can arise from loop damage, collapse, or debris within the system. Accurate pressure drop data also plays a crucial role in calibrating the system during commissioning, particularly when multiple loops are connected and balanced for consistent pressure distribution. While this test typically verifies that the bore will “flow,” it often lacks sufficient rigor.
In many cases, the process does not adequately detail how much the pressure or flow rate deviates from design specifications. Consequently, hidden issues such as high-pressure losses or flow restrictions may remain undetected. Over time, these inefficiencies can significantly degrade system performance, leading to unexpectedly high energy bills or insufficient heating and cooling. For homeowners or facility managers, these hidden flaws could result in financial losses amounting to tens of thousands of dollars over the system’s 20–25 year lifespan. This highlights the critical need for more robust and data-driven pressure testing protocols to ensure long-term system reliability and efficiency.
Proposed Improvements. A more robust approach — drawing from O&G’s systematic testing and record-keeping — would involve the following measures. Capturing continuous pressure and flow-rate readings over several hours, rather than relying on static photos, i.e. automated data logging, provides granular information about system performance. Comparing the observed pressure drop against the system’s expected values, i.e. design-based criteria, reveals if the loop meets design specifications or if corrective action is needed. Storing digital data for each bore ensures traceable records and future access if the system needs troubleshooting or performance optimization. Such procedures need not be prohibitively expensive; they simply require a shift from “snapshot” verification to a more process-oriented form of digital quality control.
Advocating for Practical Solutions
Among the industry professionals bridging oilfield knowledge and shallow geothermal, Dmitry Kuravskiy, Drilling Operations Lead at Celsius Energy (Cambridge, MA), stands out for promoting pragmatic, cost-conscious solutions. Having spent over a decade in the O&G sector around the world, Kuravskiy understands the pitfalls of poorly controlled drilling and the value of data for continuous improvement. His current work in the American shallow geothermal market focuses on three key problems: reducing bore collisions, modernizing pressure and flow tests, and futureproofing the industry. By employing basic post-drilling surveys, developers can confirm that wells stay within planned offsets, minimizing collisions and boundary disputes. Kuravskiy pushes for a more dynamic pressure and flow test data collection approach, supplementing or replacing the current “two photos” practice with continuous data sets. His emphasis on data-driven processes aligns with the geothermal sector’s need to demonstrate reliability and accountability — key factors in securing widespread policy support and consumer confidence.
A Sustainable Path Forward
Shallow geothermal has the potential to revolutionize building energy use, delivering cleaner and more cost-stable heating and cooling. Yet bore collisions, boundary disputes, and inadequate pressure verification procedures can undermine public trust and deter investment. By adapting oil and gas best practices in verticality control, process optimization, and digital verification, the geothermal industry can address these issues head-on. Simple survey tools, used post-drilling, help confirm well paths and mitigate legal risks related to boundary encroachments. Rigorous scheduling, standardization, and iterative improvements reduce costs while increasing efficiency. Moving beyond “two-photo pressure tests” to more robust flow and pressure monitoring ensures systems perform as intended, protecting clients from high operating expenses down the road.
As shallow geothermal expands into new markets, these measures will serve as essential safeguards, helping developers and property owners avoid costly mistakes. By embracing oilfield rigor and balancing it with shallow geothermal unique economic realities, the industry can cultivate a strong reputation for reliability — one that will endure as the world accelerates its pursuit of low-carbon energy solutions.
Baburajan Kizhakedath