Chevron building solar plant — to pump oil

Oil giant Chevron Corp. is turning to the sun to help produce fossil fuel, Reuters tells us.

At a city council meeting last night in Coalinga, Calif., the company outlined its plan to build a solar thermal plant to produce steam that would be injected into wells to help extract oil. Natural gas currently creates the steam.

Construction is to begin by the end of the year, and production would start by the end of next year. The plant will consist of more than 7,000 mirrors on 100 acres of Chevron-owned land. The mirrors will reflect sunlight onto a 323-foot-tall tower, where water will boil and be piped into the ground. The plant will not produce electricity.

Chevron, the second-largest U.S. oil company, said it hopes to replicate the effort at other plants.

As for other solar applications, Chevron says it is "the nation's largest installer of solar energy for education institutions." The company also has a "master contract" to work with the federal government "to reduce energy and water consumption and increase the government's use of renewable energy." Read more here.

Two weeks ago we noted that the first U.S. solar power towers had produced electricity for residential and commercial use.

Posted by Michael Winter at 04:08 PM/ET, August 21, 2009 in Energy, Money

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