Geodynamics said the state-of-the-art rig had been unloaded from the ship in Brisbane on the weekend and the first trucks were en route to the company’s Habanero project near Innamincka in the Cooper Basin.

The $32 million unit is the most powerful onshore rig in Australia, capable of drilling to depths of around 6000 metres.

Once it arrives, the company plans to fully assemble and commission the rig before spudding the Habanero-3 production well at the end of the month.

Elsewhere in Australia, Green Rock’s geothermal licences at Olympic Dam were influenced by an ideal stress regime, an independent study of drilling data suggested.

The CSIRO study of the in-situ stresses from the hot granites drilled in Blanche-1 found the two principal horizontal stress directions were larger than those running vertically.

“This is an ideal situation for generating an optimal heat exchange reservoir that would allow a maximum distance between injection and production wells,” the CSIRO said.

Green Rock explained that more heat would be recovered from water pumped through fractures opening in a sub-horizontal direction.

“Water circulated between injection and production wells essentially would be travelling horizontally through the granites as it gathers the heat trapped in the granites,” it said.

“If the pathways had not been sub-horizontal, the water travelling through the fractures connecting the wells would pass from hot rocks to cooler rocks at shallower depths, reducing the effectiveness of the underground heat exchange process.”

Green Rock intends to use its upcoming mini-hydraulic fracture stimulation program later this year to measure the size and orientation of these principal stress directions, in a bid to reduce the risks and costs of the deeper fraccing program.

It is trying to secure a suitable drilling rig for this operation.