Page 173 - Jan 2013

January 2013 | Business World Magazine | 173
“Petratherm was officially founded in 2004
after being spun out of a successful mining
and exploration company called Minotaur
Explorations,” says Terry Kallis, Managing
Director of Petratherm. Minotaur had al-
ready established itself as a successful explora-
tion company that had made several notable
discoveries, including copper at Prominent
Hill. “Basically, Minotaur Explorations is an
entrepreneurial explorer/developer, and that
is its strength,” says Kallis. “It has spun out a
few companies, and they created Petratherm
with the postulation that they could find hot
rocks using its exploration techniques, rather
than relying on old drill hole data. This is one
of the big differentiators with Petratherm. If
you look atwherewe are, we have a spotwhere
no one has drilled a deep well within a 90 km
radius.” Petratherm derives its name from the
technology and energy source it looks to ex-
ploit; “petra” comes from the Greek word for
rock, and “therm” is both short for thermal,
and it is a unit of energy that measures heat
energy output.
Petratherm has three projects in Australia,
the flagship is the Paralana site which is lo-
cated near Mt Painter in the Flinders Ranges.
Here they have completed two wells and aim
to complete a proof of concept plant by the
end of 2012. In this endeavour Petratherm
has also received a 62.8 million dollar grant
from the Federal Government to which they
are re-investing into the technology that they
will rely on as well as the company’s opera-
tions.
Their East Gippsland location in Victo-
ria has been awarded a geothermal explora-
tion permit that will allow the company to