KenGen Risks Losing Olkaria Wells Over 18-Year Licence Blunder Kenya Electricity Generating Company (KenGen) faces a serious legal and operational risk at Olkaria after an error in the coordinates of its geothermal licence left part of the company’s wells, steam infrastructure and other assets outside its legally recognised area. The licensing mistake, made nearly two decades ago, remains unresolved despite the Ministry of Energy and Petroleum acknowledging the problem in 2017. The dispute has raised questions about the security of KenGen’s investments, the government’s management of geothermal resources and the potential consequences for Kenya’s electricity supply. Olkaria is the country’s most important geothermal centre and accounts for the overwhelming majority of Kenya’s installed geothermal generation capacity. Licence Error Exposes Strategic Assets The problem dates back to September 19, 2008, when the Ministry of Energy and Petroleum issued KenGen a licence covering ...
Geothermal risk insurance and underwriting markets are quietly becoming one of the most important enablers for scaling geothermal – especially EGS and “superhot” projects – because they turn subsurface uncertainty into a risk that developers, DFIs and lenders can actually price, transfer and manage.
Image : Steam gushing out of a geothermal power plant
Why geothermal needs underwriting, not just subsidies
Geothermal is structurally different from solar and wind. The biggest risk sits up front in exploration and early drilling, before there is a proven resource or a power purchase agreement. A few bad wells can sink a project’s economics, and that’s a kind of binary, pre‑cash‑flow risk most commercial lenders and many DFIs are reluctant to take directly.
Public grants and concessional loans help, but they don’t fully solve the problem. Developers still need mechanisms that:
- Protect equity if a drilling campaign under‑performs.
- Make it easier to raise debt once resource risk is partially off the table.
- Allow capital providers to spread and price risk across portfolios, not on a project‑by‑project, all‑or‑nothing basis.
That’s where geothermal risk insurance and structured underwriting come in: they convert “unknown geology” into defined, contractually managed risk with clear triggers and payout rules.
GRMF‑style geothermal risk mitigation facilities
Geothermal Risk Mitigation Facilities (GRMF‑style schemes) are essentially public or public–private insurance mechanisms wrapped in a fund structure.
Typical features:
- Co‑funding drilling
They cover a high share (often 40–80 percent) of eligible exploration and appraisal costs – drilling, testing, sometimes even surface infrastructure – via grants, contingent grants or forgivable loans.
-Performance‑linked support
If the drilling campaign fails to confirm the expected thermal capacity, the support becomes non‑repayable. If the project succeeds, the developer repays part or all of the support, often on concessional terms.
- Technical gatekeeping
Access is conditional on rigorous resource assessments, well‑designed drilling programmes and independent technical review, which filters out weak projects and protects the fund.
Conceptually, GRMFs act like a public first‑loss layer on subsurface risk. That gives developers and DFIs a buffer: they still care about geology, but a dry or marginal field doesn’t automatically wipe out their capital. For a developer’s portfolio, this is huge – it makes it possible to run multiple exploration campaigns without a single failure blowing up the balance sheet.
Private geothermal resource‑risk insurance
Alongside public funds, a small but growing private market offers geothermal resource‑risk insurance. These products are usually structured around a defined programme of wells, not a whole project lifetime.
How they typically work:
- Scope
They cover a set number of wells (say 3–5 exploration/appraisal wells) drilled over a fixed period, with a pre‑agreed drilling and testing schedule.
- Trigger
The trigger is resource performance: if the aggregate tested capacity (or flow‑temperature combination) is below a pre‑negotiated threshold, the policy pays out.
- Payout
The payout reimburses a portion of drilling and testing costs, often up to a capped percentage, with partial payouts in “grey zones” where the field produces, but below expectations.
- Verification
Independent experts confirm both pre‑drill expectations and post‑drill results to reduce disputes and moral hazard.
For developers and their equity:
- This is effectively a hedge on the resource side. If the field disappoints, the insurance proceeds replenish part of the capital that would otherwise be lost.
- It makes it easier to convince investors and credit committees that the downside is bounded, which is especially important for first‑time or frontier basins.
For DFIs:
- Having insured resource risk at the drilling stage allows them to lean in harder with concessional debt or guarantees at construction, knowing that the binary “dry hole” risk is partly offloaded.
Parametric drilling and capacity covers
Parametric insurance is particularly well suited to geothermal because the key variables – wells drilled, flow rates, temperatures, tested capacity – are measurable and verifiable.
Parametric structures typically:
- Use objective triggers
For example: “Total tested capacity of the covered wells is less than X MWe at Y°C,” or “Average flow rate per well is below Z kg/s at a given enthalpy.”
- Define a payout curve
Full payout if performance is far below expectations, partial payout if it’s moderately below, and no payout if thresholds are met or exceeded.
- Simplify claims
Because the trigger is a number, not a narrative, the settlement process is faster and less contentious than traditional indemnity insurance.
This is attractive to reinsurers and DFIs because:
- It reduces ambiguity and legal friction.
- It’s easier to model aggregate exposure across a portfolio of policies.
- It lends itself to blended structures where public money funds part of the premium or provides a backstop.
For developers, parametric covers can sit alongside GRMF support: the fund co‑finances drilling, and the parametric policy compensates if capacity is significantly below the P50/P90 expectation. Together, they turn an otherwise existential risk into a manageable one.
Major reinsurers have experimented with geothermal for years, often backing national schemes or specific portfolios rather than one‑off policies. Their stance is generally:
-Interested but selective
They see geothermal as a potential diversification play within energy and natural‑hazard books, but only if the risks are well‑curated.
- Data‑driven
They want good geoscience, drilling history and performance data to calibrate expected loss. Projects in basins with analog wells and solid studies are easier to underwrite than first‑of‑kind, data‑poor prospects.
- Portfolio‑focused
They prefer portfolios spanning multiple basins and jurisdictions, so that a single field failure doesn’t dominate losses.
From their perspective, the big pitfalls are:
- Poorly screened projects being bundled into schemes for political reasons.
- Overly generous coverage (e.g., insuring 100 percent of costs) that destroys alignment between developer and insurer.
- Inadequate premium levels in markets where exploration risk is structurally high.
This is why you often see reinsurers sitting behind:
- National geothermal risk schemes.
- Specialist managing general agents (MGAs) focusing on geothermal or broader clean‑energy infrastructure.
- Blended facilities where DFIs and donors take a first‑loss or mezzanine position to make the risk acceptable.
National and regional underwriting facilities
Beyond individual policies, some markets are building geothermal‑specific underwriting facilities that pool risk and expertise.
Key features:
- Local insurer participation
Several domestic insurers contribute capital to a shared facility that offers standardised geothermal risk products.
- Reinsurance backing
The facility cedes part of the risk to global reinsurers once the portfolio reaches scale, blending local and international capacity.
- Technical assistance
DFIs and donors support capacity building: training local underwriters in geoscience basics, drilling risk, and how to evaluate POS (probability of success) studies.
For developers, this means:
- More tailored, in‑market products instead of having to negotiate one‑off covers with offshore underwriters.
- Potentially better alignment with local regulators and energy policy, because the facility is embedded in the domestic financial system.
For DFIs:
- A way to “crowd in” local capital and expertise, not just international investors.
- A platform through which they can deploy guarantees, concessional tranches, or premium subsidies at scale.
Pricing drivers: what underwriters actually look at
When an underwriter prices geothermal subsurface risk, they’re essentially asking: “What is the probability distribution of usable capacity versus the cost of getting there?”
Major drivers include:
- Resource and geoscience quality
- Evidence for high enough temperature and enthalpy.
- Structural and stratigraphic understanding (faults, permeability pathways).
- Quality of seismic, MT, gravity and geochemistry data.
- Drilling and execution risk
- Rig capability and contractor track record.
- Well design (trajectory, casing, mud, cementing).
- Operational controls and contingency plans for kicks, losses or stuck pipe.
- Developer capability and governance
- Prior experience in similar projects.
- Project management structures and decision‑making processes.
- Policy structure
- Number of wells covered, coverage percentage, limits and sub‑limits.
- Definitions of success, partial success and failure.
- Treatment of salvage (e.g., using a weak well as an injector rather than a write‑off).
The premium reflects expected loss plus a margin for uncertainty and capital costs. In immature markets with sparse data and few analogs, that uncertainty premium can be high, which is why public support is often needed to make insurance affordable initially.
How developers and DFIs can integrate insurance into their capital stack
For developers:
- Strategic use of insurance
Think of resource‑risk insurance as a portfolio tool. You don’t need to insure every well everywhere, but insuring high‑impact, early campaigns in new basins can protect the franchise and keep investors engaged.
- Pipeline signalling
Successfully insured and executed campaigns build a track record, making future projects easier to underwrite and finance. Equity and debt providers will pay attention to your “insured wells drilled” track record.
- Deal structuring
Insurance can be wrapped into SPVs or drilling JVs so that specific investors – e.g., a drilling equity fund – get tailored downside protection.
For DFIs and climate‑aligned lenders:
- Blended risk structures
Combine public GRMF‑style support with private parametric covers. DFIs can provide first‑loss or mezzanine layers that make it attractive for insurers and reinsurers to participate.
- Standardisation
Promote standard documentation for POS studies, drilling plans, and capacity testing. That reduces friction and makes it easier for insurers to scale products across multiple projects and countries.
- Replication and scaling
Once a facility or product works in one region, use it as a template elsewhere, adjusting for regulatory context and market conditions.
Where this goes next: superhot, EGS and beyond
As the sector pushes into hotter, deeper, more complex environments – advanced EGS, closed‑loop systems, superhot rock – subsurface risk will increase in both technical and financial terms. At the same time, the payoff per successful well rises because high‑enthalpy resources can deliver more power per well.
That combination makes underwriting even more critical:
- Tools like high‑temperature MWD, advanced logging and downhole robotics reduce technical uncertainty, which in turn enables insurers to price risk more confidently.
- Parametric and portfolio‑based covers will likely become the norm as developers run multi‑well programmes across several basins.
- DFIs and reinsurers can co‑design facilities that support frontier technologies while keeping systemic risk within acceptable bounds.
For developers and DFIs, the key message is simple: geothermal risk insurance and underwriting are no longer fringe experiments. They are becoming a core part of making geothermal – especially high‑risk, high‑reward EGS and superhot projects – investable at scale. The smartest developers will design their exploration strategies, capital stacks and stakeholder communications with these instruments front and centre.
Comments
Post a Comment