Reusing oil field wastewater is key to shale's future, researchers say

[thackney]

Reusing oil field wastewater is key to shale's future, researchers say
https://www.chron.com/business/energy/article/Studies-Water-reuse-key-to-the-future-of-shale-15073306.php
February 21, 2020

Reusing oil field wastewater for hydraulic fracturing operations will be critical to maintaining productivity in U.S. shale plays, according to a pair of studies released this month.

Scientists with the University of Texas at Austin Jackson School of Geosciences and three other universities studied how much wastewater eight major U.S. shale basins produced and then analyzed options for recycling and reusing that water.

“The water volumes that are quoted vary widely, that’s why we did this study,” UT researcher Bridget Scanlon said in a statement. “This really provides a quantitative analysis of hydraulic fracturing water demand and produced water volumes.”

Researchers determined that oil and natural gas wells from those eight shale basins produced more than 160 billion gallons of wastewater in 2017 — enough to fill more than 242,000 Olympic-size swimming pools....

[EdinVA]

To expensive to clean up?
It looks like they reaped $32 billion dollars in oil from the Permian Basin in 2017, so it seems to me that spending a few million to clean up the waste water would be money well spent.
This is why the oil industry has such a bad rap.... profit is good but clean up your mess.

[thackney]

To expensive to clean up?
It looks like they reaped $32 billion dollars in oil from the Permian Basin in 2017, so it seems to me that spending a few million to clean up the waste water would be money well spent.
This is why the oil industry has such a bad rap.... profit is good but clean up your mess.

It is not a mess poured on the ground, it is injected back underground in a disposal well.

It is water that is not usable for drinking, it is salt-water with other accompaniments that comes up with the oil and natural gas.

It is most often cheaper to put it back underground, deep below fresh water aquifers.  Treating it for reuse is still more expensive.

[IsailedawayfromFR]

To expensive to clean up?
It looks like they reaped $32 billion dollars in oil from the Permian Basin in 2017, so it seems to me that spending a few million to clean up the waste water would be money well spent.
This is why the oil industry has such a bad rap.... profit is good but clean up your mess.

It is ALWAYS cleaned up.  Almost all oil produced also has some water produced with it anywhere in the world oil is produced. 

Handling of produced water is a fundamental and integral part of producing oil. 

What makes the handling of water much more of an issue when it comes to unconventionals is that many millions of gallons of water have to be injected into the well (the 'frac') to get the production.  A typical conventional oil well has little or no injection of water.

Means a whole bunch of water needs to be handled both in injection and production(as most of the water fracced into the well comes back).

It makes a lot of sense logistically to simply treat the water that is produced back in order to reuse for frac injection into the next well.

The problem until recently is that frac water was required to be for the most part fresh water in order to properly mix the components to 'gel' the water so sand can be propagated into the formation to optimize the frac and make the best producer.

Recently, the industry has gravitated to using a lot more(ten to twenty times) as much water and without a 'gel' component in the water(we call it 'slickwater' fraccing).  It can use saltier water and does not have to rely upon fresh water.

So this lends itself to being reused.
And that is the primary issue here - reuse of water instead of tapping water supplies elsewhere to provide the water needed for the next frac job.

[Smokin Joe]

It is ALWAYS cleaned up.  Almost all oil produced also has some water produced with it anywhere in the world oil is produced. 

Handling of produced water is a fundamental and integral part of producing oil. 

What makes the handling of water much more of an issue when it comes to unconventionals is that many millions of gallons of water have to be injected into the well (the 'frac') to get the production.  A typical conventional oil well has little or no injection of water.

Means a whole bunch of water needs to be handled both in injection and production(as most of the water fracced into the well comes back).

It makes a lot of sense logistically to simply treat the water that is produced back in order to reuse for frac injection into the next well.

The problem until recently is that frac water was required to be for the most part fresh water in order to properly mix the components to 'gel' the water so sand can be propagated into the formation to optimize the frac and make the best producer.

Recently, the industry has gravitated to using a lot more(ten to twenty times) as much water and without a 'gel' component in the water(we call it 'slickwater' fraccing).  It can use saltier water and does not have to rely upon fresh water.

So this lends itself to being reused.
And that is the primary issue here - reuse of water instead of tapping water supplies elsewhere to provide the water needed for the next frac job.

Not so much an issue in the Williston Basin, we have far more fresh water than demand, and the fracwater is sometimes reused, weather permitting.

The part left out of the equation is the cost of trucking millions of gallons of flowaback water around, cleaning it, and storing it in between frac jobs, which doesn't work so well with fresh water in this climate for 6 months out of the year.

It has to be heated to keep it from freezing.

But no one factored in the alleged environmental impact of heating a million gallons of water in temperatures that frequently are from single digits to below zero.
 
It is done the way it is done because that is the least expensive way to do it.

Besides, every gallon of water injected into a wastewater well is just that much more the oceans don't rise to drown out coastal cities, right? 

[Bigun]

Not so much an issue in the Williston Basin, we have far more fresh water than demand, and the fracwater is sometimes reused, weather permitting.

The part left out of the equation is the cost of trucking millions of gallons of flowaback water around, cleaning it, and storing it in between frac jobs, which doesn't work so well with fresh water in this climate for 6 months out of the year.

It has to be heated to keep it from freezing.

But no one factored in the alleged environmental impact of heating a million gallons of water in temperatures that frequently are from single digits to below zero.
 
It is done the way it is done because that is the least expensive way to do it.

Besides, every gallon of water injected into a wastewater well is just that much more the oceans don't rise to drown out coastal cities, right? 

There never has been and never will be a one size fits all solution to anything!

[Smokin Joe]

There never has been and never will be a one size fits all solution to anything!

That is why the powers of the Federal Government were limited, and the States held sway over much more--why centralized decision making is a BAD idea.

[truth_seeker]

I worked on a big waterflood oil field, where injection water was both drawn from shallow aquifers cnnnected to the sea, and was from cleaned production water.

The latter wasn't yet successful during my time there, but rsearch was continuing then.

The heater to separate oil from water was called a "water knock-out."

I conducted field tests, of "water quality," regarding flow in a porous media.

That was 47 years ago. Both production and injection well drilled directionally from shore and from platforms.





 

[Smokin Joe]

I worked on a big waterflood oil field, where injection water was both drawn from shallow aquifers cnnnected to the sea, and was from cleaned production water.

The latter wasn't yet successful during my time there, but rsearch was continuing then.

The heater to separate oil from water was called a "water knock-out."

I conducted field tests, of "water quality," regarding flow in a porous media.

That was 47 years ago. Both production and injection well drilled directionally from shore and from platforms.

We have "treaters" on just about every well, to break oil/water emulsions and 'treat' the oil for shipment (truck or pipeline), and they, too are heated. So, I'm guessing you were down south or in Cali, if in the states, although Prudhoe is a possibility.

But here, during winter, frac water has to be heated (before the frac) or you get a huge, steel enclosed ice cube with wheels on one end, that might be thawed by next august.

There are a bunch of these (20 or more) on almost every frac job, and all have to be kept from freezing.


In a waterflood, you are injecting water at a constant rate more or less, on a frac job, over a very short time, and then recovering flowback water when the well is initially produced. Different scenarios.

To re-use that water, it would have to be treated, brought back into spec, chemically, and moved and stored, rather than disposed of by injection. the storage during treating the water to bring it back into spec and afterward is a bugaboo, and requires multiple handling of the water, not necessarily when it is ready for use. That means storage, and to do that without chemically altering the water, that means tanks, and those would have to be heated in winter to prevent freezing--all more expensive than disposal and starting with a fresh batch when you need it.

About a mile down, here, far from (vertically) and well isolated (geologically) from surface aquifers, we have a lovely sand formation which accepts incredible amounts of injected water, without seismic problems. It's cheaper that way, and employs people at the disposal depots as well. 

[Bigun]

I worked on a big waterflood oil field, where injection water was both drawn from shallow aquifers cnnnected to the sea, and was from cleaned production water.

The latter wasn't yet successful during my time there, but rsearch was continuing then.

The heater to separate oil from water was called a "water knock-out."

I conducted field tests, of "water quality," regarding flow in a porous media.

That was 47 years ago. Both production and injection well drilled directionally from shore and from platforms.

I was involved in a fairly large waterflood project myself years ago offshore Abu Dhabi.  We didn't have to worry about
anything freezing but did have to deal with idiots who knew nothing about water chemistry continually wanting to do things that would have completely screwed the entire zone up forever.

[Hoodat]

Not so much an issue in the Williston Basin, we have far more fresh water than demand, and the fracwater is sometimes reused, weather permitting.

Injection water isn't an issue here either.

[thackney]

Injection water isn't an issue here either.

But I would guess cleaning it up is an issue.  Injecting a field with live organics sounds like a problem.

[Bigun]

But I would guess cleaning it up is an issue.  Injecting a field with live organics sounds like a problem.

GEE!!  Ya think??  /s

[Smokin Joe]

But I would guess cleaning it up is an issue.  Injecting a field with live organics sounds like a problem.

It's the anerobes that make a real mess of things. (They generate H2S, for those who don't know, which is highly poisonous, complicates things at the refinery, and corrodes everything.)

[Hoodat]

But I would guess cleaning it up is an issue.  Injecting a field with live organics sounds like a problem.

All water we use comes from the Gulf, and all water we discard goes into the Gulf.  So yes, cleanup is a big part of the process.  On both ends.  Just sayin' we have plenty of water to draw from.

[Hoodat]

It's the anerobes that make a real mess of things.

That's what the biocide is for.

Another cool thing is that putting a strong electric current through seawater creates bleach.

[thackney]

...Another cool thing is that putting a strong electric current through seawater creates bleach.

Interesting, thank you for sharing that.

[Elderberry]

That's what the biocide is for.

Another cool thing is that putting a strong electric current through seawater creates bleach.

Interesting. I've never electrolyzed seawater except when I tried to disconnect my boat's battery while underwater during a storm and it electrolyzed Me.

I've electrolyzed plenty of saltwater though to produce sodium chlorate.

Dang! I just looked. Sodium Chlorate is modified to Sodium Dioxide, a bleach, that is used to bleach wood pulp.

[Hoodat]

Interesting, thank you for sharing that.

@thackney

Here is some info on the reaction:

https://pristinewater.in/technical-details/electrochlorination/

[thackney]

@thackney

Here is some info on the reaction:

https://pristinewater.in/technical-details/electrochlorination/

And some good reasons there to be careful with it.

Thank you

[Smokin Joe]

@thackney

Here is some info on the reaction:

https://pristinewater.in/technical-details/electrochlorination/

Thanks for the info!

[Elderberry]

Very close to the process I used to create sodium chlorate from brine.

According to the following equation: NaCl + 3 H2O + 6 e- → NaClO3 + 3 H2

Sodium hypochlorite is also created but I convert it by heating the final solution.

3 NaOCl (aq) → 2 NaCl (aq) + NaClO3 (aq)

[Joe Wooten]

I worked on a big waterflood oil field, where injection water was both drawn from shallow aquifers cnnnected to the sea, and was from cleaned production water.

The latter wasn't yet successful during my time there, but rsearch was continuing then.

The heater to separate oil from water was called a "water knock-out."

I conducted field tests, of "water quality," regarding flow in a porous media.

That was 47 years ago. Both production and injection well drilled directionally from shore and from platforms.

I had one summer job as a roustabout in an oil field (right off I-20 just to the east of the town) near Colorado City Tx that was a water flood project. The water used was brackish well water pumped from about 1200 ft and recycled water from the water knock out plant. One of the nastiest jobs was taking the system out of service and cleaning out the innards of the water separator tanks. It usually took all day and even though we wore plastic overgarments, ruined the clothing we wore. I would lose 10-15 pounds on those days working inside the cramped confines of the separator in the 100+ degree heat of a west Texas summer.

[IsailedawayfromFR]

I had one summer job as a roustabout in an oil field (right off I-20 just to the east of the town) near Colorado City Tx that was a water flood project. The water used was brackish well water pumped from about 1200 ft and recycled water from the water knock out plant. One of the nastiest jobs was taking the system out of service and cleaning out the innards of the water separator tanks. It usually took all day and even though we wore plastic overgarments, ruined the clothing we wore. I would lose 10-15 pounds on those days working inside the cramped confines of the separator in the 100+ degree heat of a west Texas summer.

The mixing of waters almost always produces problems.

Scale buildup is the biggest problem of all.

[Bigun]

The mixing of waters almost always produces problems.

Scale buildup is the biggest problem of all.

Yep! And pumping incompatible waters down into a production zone is a sure-fire way to screw things up royally!