Zanskar Geothermal & Minerals’ Big Blind Geothermal Play in Western Nevada: AI Utilized for the First Industry-Discovered “Blind” Site in Thirty Years

     Utah-headquartered startup Zanskar Geothermal & Minerals announced that it has discovered a “blind” geothermal system prospect in the Western Nevada desert with the aid of AI. This is a conventional geothermal project. The hydrothermal system was confirmed by drilling to 2,700 feet, where they found porous rock at 250 degrees Fahrenheit. Thus, it is hot enough to develop a power plant and shallow enough to aid the economics. They estimate that the first electricity could be produced from the project in three to five years.

     James Faulds, a professor of geosciences at the Nevada Bureau of Mines and Geology, told CNN:

“Estimates suggest over three-quarters of US geothermal resources are blind. Refining methods to find such systems has the potential to unleash many tens and perhaps hundreds of gigawatts in the western US alone.”

“Big Blind is the company’s first blind site discovery, but it’s the third site it has drilled and hit commercial resources. “We expect dozens, to eventually hundreds, of new sites to be coming to market,” Hoiland said.

     A blind discovery is one where there are no surface indicators of subsurface geothermal systems and no history of any geothermal exploration or other prior well data in the area.

     According to the company:

“Zanskar drilled two intermediate depth wells in July and August 2025 and intersected an approximately 250°F permeable reservoir at roughly 2,700 feet depth. These conditions exceed minimum thresholds for utility-scale geothermal power and contrast greatly with regional background subsurface conditions, which would require much greater well field depths (~10,000 ft) and expensive stimulations associated with next-gen drilling technologies to achieve similar temperature and permeability conditions to what these discovery wells encountered in a natural geothermal system.”

     They believe that the prospective area and similar ones can produce over 100 MWe of domestic power each with off-the-shelf power plant technology. The find also bodes well for the discovery of hotter rocks deeper, below the current discovery. They have deeper prospects here and elsewhere and expect to find those hotter rocks. This is exciting because conventional geothermal has been considered by many to be “tapped out,” at least for easy-to-find resources. While 250 degrees Fahrenheit is not considered to be a high temperature in geothermal terms, it will likely lead to deeper and hotter rocks with higher prospectivity. They also believe they can find hotter rocks at similar depths in this system and others. The find also proves the company’s already successful exploration model.

     It remains to be seen whether Big Blind is scalable to an electric-grade resource, but further drilling will provide that data. However, positive indicators from the recent drilling include hot rocks, the presence of large open fractures, and lost circulation of drilling fluids during drilling, all suggest the presence of a geothermal system. As can be seen in the following graphics of well temperature, core logs, and schematics, the open fracture density is high at the depths from about 1900ft to the total depth near 2700ft.

Figure 1. Plot of the core logging data from BGS-67(61-32)-29, our Discovery well. From left to right: Well Diagram, the simplified Lithology, temperatures versus depth, and open fracture density as a pre-image log proxy for zones of likely faulting.

    

“What’s so exciting about Big Blind is that it isn’t Zanskar’s only blind anomaly in the hopper; we have dozens more behind it. And as we test these anomalies with deeper drilling, we’re set to prove many more sites capable of generating utility-scale power. In other words, Big Blind is just the beginning.”

     Below, they explain more about why they think this is just the beginning of an exploratory revival for conventional geothermal systems, referencing the big discovery at Lightning Dock in New Mexico.

“At Lightning Dock, we showed that by simply drilling into much deeper and hotter portions of the geothermal system (going from ~2000 ft to ~8000 ft depths), we were able to (1) increase the production brine temperatures by several tens of degrees Fahrenheit, (2) have more stable production brine temperatures over longer timeframes, and (3) increase the productivity (i.e., the ability of the well to flow) of our production wells. Conventional wisdom suggests that permeability should decrease with increasing depths, but that may not be true for fracture hosted permeability in these fault-hosted geothermal systems. If indeed these fault hosted geothermal systems are as permeable or as close to the same permeability at greater depths, then sites like Lightning Dock, Pumpernickel, and Big Blind will generate a lot more power than typical, average depth geothermal well fields (~2000-5000 ft depths). Our full-physics simulations indicate that more than an order of magnitude more generation is possible. And that’s just one more reason our team remains relentlessly focused on unlocking the true abundance of naturally-occurring geothermal systems.”

      The company bought the Lightning Dock power plant in 2024 and drilled deeper, finding even better rock and one of the biggest geothermal wells in the country. They may have a more economic portfolio than other popular geothermal formats such as enhanced geothermal (EGS) which utilizes hydraulic fracturing to make a porous reservoir out of non- rock that is dry and hot, or advanced geothermal (AGS), most of which utilizes drilling and connecting wells in a closed-loop system that does not pump water but uses a working fluid that is heated, brought to surface, then drops back down to be reheated, These work by conduction rather than convection like hydrothermal systems do. The potential for power in conventional geothermal is much higher than for EGS or AGS, which some have dismissed as overhyped. 

     The company did not elaborate on how it utilized AI in the discovery aside from saying that it was integrated with geological modeling and conventional geothermal exploration and confirming that AI was able to find signals in the noise of a variety of data.

 "The AI models Zanskar uses are fed information on where blind systems already exist. This data is plentiful as, over the last century and more, humans have accidentally stumbled on many around the world while drilling for other resources such as oil and gas."

"The models then scour huge amounts of data — everything from rock composition to magnetic fields — to find patterns that point to the existence of geothermal reserves. AI models have “gotten really good over the last 10 years at being able to pull those types of signals out of noise,” Hoiland said.

 

    

References:

 

A startup discovered a hidden source of abundant, clean energy — and did it in an unusual way. Laura Paddison. CNN. December 12, 2025. A startup discovered a hidden source of abundant, clean energy — and did it in an unusual way

Finding and Proving Up 'Big Blind'; Zanskar's Third Deep Discovery Within the Last Year. The early signs of an impending geothermal bonanza. December 4, 2025. Zanskar Geothermal & Minerals. Finding and Proving Up 'Big Blind'; Zanskar's Third Deep Discovery Within the Last Year

Zanskar Reveals ‘Big Blind’ - The Discovery of the First Blind Geothermal System in the U.S. by Industry in Over 30 Years. Zanskar Geothermal & Minerals. December 4, 2025. Zanskar Reveals ‘Big Blind’ - The Discovery of the First Blind Geothermal System in the U.S. by Industry in Over 30 Years

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