How much in Canada? How much in Alberta?
Perhaps Kenney/CAPP’s War Room will dig into it.
Wastewater levels rise 15% as storage space runs out by Mike Soraghan, E&E News, February 18, 2020
The amount of wastewater created by oil and gas wells has increased in recent years, according to a new estimate, but not as fast as oil and gas production.
Oil and gas production yielded 1.02 trillion gallons of wastewater in 2017, or 2.8 billion gallons a day, according to the estimate by John Veil, an expert on energy and water who previously managed the water policy program at the Argonne National Laboratory. That is an increase of 15% above 2012.
During that time, Veil’s report says, oil production increased by 50% and gas production increased by nearly 18%.
“The important take-away message is that water production increased at a slower rate than oil and gas production,” the report said.
That’s because the unconventional wells — generally horizontal wells that are fracked — that have driven the country’s shale boom produce less water than conventional wells, which tend to be older, Veil said.
The report was done for the Groundwater Protection Council, an Oklahoma City-based nonprofit of state water regulators. [IT’S BOARD IS MADE UP OF MOSTLY OIL & GAS INDUSTRY CAPTURED AGENCIES AND OR REGULATORS, including the many Dept Env Quality listed below. Kansas Corporation Commission is the oil and gas agency there, the “environmental agency” is the Kansas Department of Health and Environment. Snap below taken from its website 02 20 2020. Yellow highlight indicates oil and gas regulators, or more accurately, non-regulators.]
Veil is discussing his research at a Groundwater Protection Council meeting this week in San Antonio, Texas.
There is no centralized national reporting of oil field wastewater from the roughly 1 million active oil and gas wells in the United States. Veil tracked down data from more than 30 state oil and gas regulators along with federal agencies. He says the report is the most comprehensive and current data on produced water volume and what happens to it.
Also called “salt water” and “brine,” produced water comes up the wellbore with oil and gas. Some of the water is from the fracking done to complete the well, but most of the water is from the same underground formation as the oil or gas.
The fluid can be several times saltier than ocean water, and it can also be contaminated with drilling chemicals, minerals and radioactive material picked up from the underground formation.
Oil fields are often dotted with bare patches of ground contaminated by the salty wastewater. The oil field waste is exempt from the federal law that governs most hazardous waste, known as the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA).
The challenge of what to do with that water has only grown with the country’s oil and gas boom.
Spills and other mishaps with produced water have happened throughout the oil patch. Experts say the salty fluid is often harder to clean up than spilled oil, and it can sterilize the soil for years after a spill. Underground injection of the fluid has caused earthquakes, most notably in Oklahoma.
And experts have begun seeing signs that the industry is gradually running out of space to dispose of wastewater in the deep [AND SHALLOW PROTECTED DRINKING WATER AQUIFERS IN SOME CASES] aquifers it has historically used.
In Oklahoma, a disposal formation was overpressured to the point that water broke out to the surface on a farm. Water eight times saltier than seawater is continuing to burble out (Energywire, Dec. 3, 2019).
Because of those problems, some oil companies and states are looking at other uses for the water and at ways to treat it so that it can be piped into streams (Energywire, Nov. 13, 2019). Industry is making similar requests in Pennsylvania (Energywire, Nov. 26, 2019).
Texas, the nation’s largest oil and gas producer, had the most wastewater in 2017, with nearly 420 billion gallons, about 41% of the national total. Among other large producers, California had 13% of the U.S. total, Oklahoma had 12%, Wyoming had 7%, and Kansas had 5%.
Of the 1 trillion gallons of water produced in 2017, 92% was injected underground, but not all of it was put into disposal wells. Nearly 44% was injected into active oil-producing formations to help produce more oil. About 48% was injected into disposal wells.
Another 6% was piped to streams and surface waters. Producers in arid Western states can put produced water into surface water with a permit. Also, nearly all produced water from offshore wells is discharged under EPA permits to the ocean after treatment. [IF IT’S OIL AND GAS INDUSTRY “TREATMENT” IT’S MOSTLY LIKELY PATHETIC AND INSUFFICIENT]
About 1% was reused within the oil and gas industry as drilling fluid or frack fluid. Another 1% was put to use outside of the industry for uses such as irrigation and control of dust and ice on roads.
And a little less than half a percent was evaporated from onsite ponds and pits and at commercial disposal facilities.
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