THE term “environmentally friendly” has long been the buzzword in business. But it’s working its way into the oil and gas field in a very important way – recycling water.
Oil and gas companies are increasingly working with third parties to recycle water used in drilling operations. Colorado State University (CSU) and Noble Energy, for instance, will work together with a $1.4 million grant from the US Department of Energy to develop ways to treat and recycle water used in oil and gas drilling in Weld County, in the US.
Ken Carlson, a civil engineering professor at CSU, will work for the next two years with the company to develop computer modeling and online training materials in partnership with the industry. The project has the potential to reduce truck traffic, air emissions and water usage.
“This is driven by efficiency and if the industry is more efficient with water use, there’s less risk of environmental impact,” Carlson says in a news release. “Another benefit of recycling is a reduction of stress on agriculture water and a reduced risk of regional water depletion. Optimising management of water during drilling and hydraulic fracturing could mitigate other environmental impacts, including ecological degradation due to excessive truck traffic and the associated dust and land disturbance,” he adds.
The grant was awarded through DOE’s Research Partnership for Sustainable Energy in America programnme, aimed at improving water management, including acquisition, transportation and disposal, according to the release. The study will develop industry targeted geographic information system (GIS) based tools that can be used to assess the logistics of water use, transportation, reuse and disposal, Carlson said in the release.
“As we continue to increase activity in the (Denver-Julesburg) Basin, we seek solutions to maximise efficiencies while minimising impacts,” says Ted Brown, Noble’s northern region senior vice president in the release. “Our ongoing partnership with CSU is key in achieving this goal, and living up to that corporate purpose,” he adds.
Carlson says the project will be a vehicle by which he and the college can communicate, as an objective third party, the complexities of the energy industry to the community.
“We hope this collaboration will provide a unique opportunity to protect Colorado’s water resources while also enabling economic growth from the boom in oil and gas development in the region,” he says.
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Carlson ... recylcing water for reuse in |
Carlson is the co-director of the Colorado Energy Water Consortium, a partnership in northern Colorado that includes government, industry, environmental groups, agricultural interests and CSU leaders working together to solve water issues associated with oil and gas.
“It’s definitely the future,” says Carlson “It’s a matter of maybe improving it technically a bit, not that it can’t be done now, but improving it such that it’s a little more cost-effective,” he adds.
Recycling water has been going for years, though the process is part of continual improvement – it is still cheaper for companies to buy fresh water for drilling purposes. The process of recycling water is different for every region based on geology, making it a moving target.
Recycling has huge implications for the industry still on the cutting edge of new hydraulic fracturing technologies that have revived a tired oil and gas field, but haunted by continual concerns for the environment and water conservation in an area heavily stricken by drought.
The advent of horizontal drilling and multiple-stage fracking has changed the game when it comes to oil and gas production. Companies report records every quarter. The fallout from that means more truck traffic, noise, road and infrastructure damage and an intense thirst for water.
“The water is a key part of this fracking process, and it has to be of certain quality to do what it’s supposed to do, which is gel,” Carlson says.
The average horizontal well uses 2.8 million gallons of water, mixed with sand and chemicals, such as food additives, in a high-pressure solution to open the hard shale rock more than a mile below the surface. Some water initially flows out of the well, but another percentage flows back over time.
That water is recycled in a filtration process that takes about four hours at High Sierra, which is recycling about 3,000 to 4,000 barrels of water a day at its Platteville facility, run much like a municipal wastewater treatment plant.
But companies improved fracking technologies based on fresh water applications, which they are reticent to change, Carlson says.
“These companies are taking it slower because they’ve had great success with fresh water, so they’re reluctant to go backward,” Carlson says. “There are some big stakes here. If they frack with water that fouls the well, they’ll lose a lot of money,” he adds.
As science evolves with the type of water that can be used to frack wells, it’s an ever-changing target on how it’s treated at the plant.
“We’re constantly keeping up with what chemical works best” for companies, Joshua Patterson, water treatment manager for High Sierra, says during the Platteville tour. “We’re really playing with the periodic table of elements, balancing chemical equations to make that happen,” he adds.
The end result is not quite fresh water. In fact, anyone at the plant delivers a high-pitched “no” at the thought of drinking it, or even watering the grass. The end result is high in salt content, which is perfect for drilling purposes, Patterson says, but not so good for anything else.
Anadarko Petroleum works with a company out of Erie called Produced Water Solutions. Last year, alone, Anadarko was able to recycle 95 per cent of the flowback water for use in the next well on their drilling pads, says spokesman John Christiansen.
”It’s something we’ve implemented across the operation,” Christiansen says. “Conserving and managing water is absolutely paramount in operations that we have, especially as we really ramp up the liquids-rich onshore opportunities we have in use in the shale play,” he adds.
Weld County commissioners are intensely interested in the implications of water recycling, as it will take truck traffic off the road, thereby reducing the impacts of heavy loads on county roads, and the competition for water rights.
“It’s like you throw a big rock in a pond, and you get the big splash, but then you have all these ripples go out from that splash,” says Commissioner chairman Sean Conway.
As fast as horizontal drilling has transformed the Wattenberg, recycling may just be the next advance.
High Sierra has two facilities, one in Briggsdale and Platteville, capable of recycling 10,000 barrels (there are 42 gallons in a barrel) of water a day per facility. So far, the Briggsdale plant is not in use and its Platteville plant is not running at capacity because demand has not yet been strong – cost, being the No 1 factor. The water High Sierra doesn’t recycle is injected into a 10,000-foot well at the site, also a much cheaper option for disposing of well wastewater than recycling.
Demand, however, may soon change. High Sierra officials are banking on it with plans to build pipelines from the Briggsdale facility to the “field” where most drilling is taking place. One pipeline will export wastewater from the field for recycling; a second pipeline will transport the recycled water back to the field for re-use.
