India has marked a significant clean-energy milestone with the commissioning of its first and deepest geothermal wells, drilled to a depth of 1,000 metres each at Puga Valley in eastern Ladakh. Ladakh Lieutenant Governor VK Saxena formally commissioned the twin wells, executed by the ONGC Energy Centre, describing the achievement as a decisive step toward establishing India’s first-ever geothermal power plant and a blueprint for the country’s wider net-zero journey.
The two wells were drilled at an altitude exceeding 14,000 feet under what officials have described as some of the most challenging geological and climatic conditions anywhere in the world. According to an official statement, the first well reached its target depth of 1,000 metres on 22 May 2026, while the second was spudded on 3 June 2026 and completed at the same depth on 8 July 2026, a turnaround of just over a month that engineering teams have called a record for drilling under such conditions. Project engineers have reported temperatures of up to 135°C already recorded at a depth of around 400 metres, with further testing underway to identify the higher subsurface temperatures needed to sustain commercial power generation.
The Puga Valley has long been recognised as one of India’s richest geothermal reservoirs, owing to its naturally occurring hot springs and surface geothermal manifestations, a legacy of the Indian tectonic plate’s ongoing collision with the Eurasian plate along the Indus Suture Zone, which has produced deep fractures, faults, and magmatic activity beneath the region. Despite this potential, an earlier ONGC attempt to drill in the area in 2022 was abandoned after the project ran into an uncontrolled volume of subsurface water and a shortfall of suitably advanced drilling equipment, delaying India’s entry into geothermal power generation by several years.
The newly commissioned wells are intended to serve as the technical backbone for a proposed 1-megawatt (MW) pilot geothermal power project at Puga, which would become India’s first demonstration-scale geothermal power plant. While India has already built substantial capacity in solar, wind, and hydropower generation, geothermal energy has remained a largely untapped resource despite the country possessing several recognised geothermal provinces; the Geological Survey of India estimates the nation’s overall geothermal power potential at around 10 gigawatts, according to the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy.
Unlike solar and wind power, geothermal energy offers round-the-clock baseload generation that is unaffected by weather conditions, a quality that officials say could meaningfully strengthen energy security in a remote, high-altitude region like Ladakh that currently depends heavily on diesel generation, especially through its harsh winters. Speaking at the commissioning, Lieutenant Governor Saxena said the project would act as a catalyst for Ladakh’s holistic development, strengthening energy security, promoting environmental sustainability, and contributing to the region’s stated ambition of becoming a carbon-neutral, environmentally sustainable territory. If the pilot plant proves viable, officials say it could pave the way for larger, commercial-scale geothermal projects elsewhere in India’s Himalayan belt.
– Kalyan S Maramganti
