27-651. Definitions

In this article, unless the context otherwise requires:

1. " Commission" means the oil and gas conservation commission.

2. " Completion" or " completed well" means a well that has produced or is capable of producing geothermal resources or has been determined to be a dry hole, temporarily abandoned or plugged and abandoned, or has been readied for other phases of exploitation.

3. " Department" means the state land department.

4. " Environment" means the sum total of all the external conditions which may act upon an organism or community, to influence its development or existence.

5. " Geothermal area" means the same general surface area which is underlain or reasonably appears to be underlain by one or more formations containing geothermal resources.

6. " Geothermal resources" means:

(a) All products of geothermal processes embracing indigenous steam, hot water and hot brines.

(b) Steam and other gases, hot water and hot brines resulting from water, other fluids or gas artificially introduced into geothermal formations.

(c) Heat or other associated energy found in geothermal formations, including any artificial stimulation or induction thereof.

(d) Any mineral or minerals, exclusive of fossil fuels and helium gas, which may be present in solution or in association with geothermal steam, water or brines.

7. " Lease" means a geothermal resources development lease issued for state lands pursuant to the provisions of this article.

8. " Lessee" means the holder of a lease or any assignee of an original lease or part thereof.

9. " Operator" means any person drilling, maintaining, operating, pumping or in control of any well, and includes the owner, when any well is or has been or is about to be operated or under the direction of the owner.

10. " Owner" means and includes the operator when any well is operated or has been operated or is about to be operated by any person other than the owner.

11. " Person" means and includes any individual, firm, association, corporation or any other group or combination acting as a unit.

12. " Waste" means any physical waste including, but not limited to, underground waste resulting from the inefficient, excessive or improper use or dissipation of reservoir energy or resulting from the location, spacing, drilling, equipping, operation or production of a geothermal resources well in such a manner that reduces or tends to reduce the ultimate economic recovery of the geothermal resources within a reservoir, and surface waste resulting from the inefficient storage or utilization of geothermal resources and the location, spacing, drilling, equipping, operation or production of a geothermal resources well in such a manner that causes or tends to cause the unnecessary or excessive surface loss or destruction of geothermal resources obtained or released from the reservoir.

13. " Well" means any well drilled in search of geothermal resources or any development well on lands in areas proved to be underlain by one or more formations containing geothermal resources or reasonably presumed to contain geothermal resources or any well drilled for information purposes, or any producing well or reentered abandoned well used for the injection of fluids into the geothermal formation or disposition of fluids into nongeothermal formations, or any well drilled for the purpose of stimulating the heat of a formation or for the creation of heat in a formation by nuclear or any other form of energy.