TONOPAH -- Kyle Chisholm, director of research and development, for OHm Geothermal LLC, thinks his plan to search for geothermal energy on county property in Gabbs could be a win-win situation.

OHm Geothermal is a recently formed company out of Fernley consisting of what Chisholm called some fourth and fifth generation Nevadans.

Chisholm wants a license to do subsurface imaging on county property at the Gabbs Airport and the Sandy Bottom Golf Course outside Gabbs.

"Our ultimate goal is to build a geothermal facility on county-owned property if the resource were found suitable and to give Nye County a boost by providing tax dollars," Chisholm said. "The main benefit to the county should we find it on the county-owned property, we can essentially bypass the BLM. The county would retain all the royalty for the geothermal which is huge."

Projects on public land require permitting by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, which can be a long process.

If a team of geologists for his company find out there is geothermal potential, OHm Geothermal would enter into a two-stage lease agreement with Nye County to develop it, Chisholm said. The first stage of the lease would authorize OHm Geothermal to license the property for some non-hazardous, sub-surface, geological work, he said.

"We would under the license agreement have the capability to drill a small diameter test well on that property no greater than 1,000 feet, which sounds deep, but it's really not when you're talking about geothermal," Chisholm said.

In response to queries from county commissioners, Chisholm said if OHm Geothermal finds any gold, silver, oil or other precious commodities, those would revert to Nye County. OHm Geothermal is only interested in geothermal rights.

"We want to build green production capabilities," Chisholm said.

Commissioner Joni Eastley repeatedly urged Chisholm to discuss the project with county staff. The proposed lease wasn't available in the backup material provided to the public for the meeting.

"We would give the county a $25,000 payment, which is negotiable," Chisholm said.

"How about if you leave out all those details?" Eastley asked. "That sounds like a negotiating point we don't want to get into this morning."

County Manager Rick Osborne said there are some components of the proposed lease that are "causing a little bit of indigestion."

"We think it has great geothermal resources on or around the property that we believe the county owns. We would do all the preliminary title work should the county agree to lease us the property. We'll pay for that," Chisholm said.

Eastley chided Chisholm that he didn't notice the bills passed by the state Legislature this term. Senate Bill 1, passed during a special one-day session of the Nevada Legislature Dec. 8, allows the state to claim all the oil and geothermal royalties on public land instead of just the first $7 million.

Nye County took in $561,815 in revenue from a BLM auction of five geothermal leases in August 2007. The BLM took bids on 49 leases, 43 of them in Nevada, covering 122,849 acres.

Raser Power Systems of Salt Lake City and Silver State Geothermal LLC of Santa Monica, Calif., bid on the leases in Nye County, which lie in a geothermal zone in Big Smoky Valley near the Lander County line.

At the time of that auction, Nevada had 15 geothermal power plants with a capacity of 276.4 megawatts of power, according to the Geothermal Energy Association. By comparison the peak demand for the Valley Electric Association is 125 megawatts.

Churchill County is a particularly active area for geothermal activity.