Oil and gas leading in water conservation in Texas?

Oil and Gas Leading In Water Conservation?

Amid continued drought-like conditions across much of Texas, the state's oil and gas industry is turning out to be an unlikely leader in the area of water conservation.

Railroad Commissioner Christi Craddick hosted a Texas Oil and Gas Water Conservation and Recycling Symposium in Austin in May. Oil and gas operators said at the meeting that Railroad Commission rule amendments enacted more than a year ago have made it economically viable for them to enhance their water recycling efforts and help conserve Texas' water resources.

The meeting comes just a little over a year after the Railroad Commission made major amendments to the Commission's recycling rules in an effortto encourage further conservation, reuse and recycling of produced water by oil and gas operators in the oilfield.

"Today, operator Fasken Oil and Ranch reported that they expect to no longer use freshwater in their operations by the end of June 2014, resulting in a total of approximately 2.3 million gallons of fresh water left in the ground," Commissioner Craddick said.

"Due to the drought our state is currently experiencing, the importance of water conservation and scrutiny over water usage continues to grow, and the industry is doing their part in conserving this precious resource," Craddick said. "We know that industry technology in water recycling is changing the way energy is developed in Texas. We are working to fully understand the scope and potential of current recycling technologies, so that our agency's regulatory oversight can help maximize these efforts. The production of Texas' great mineral wealth can go hand in hand with conserving our precious water resources as has been illustrated by numerous oil and gas operators today," Craddick said.

At the symposium, industry representatives updated Commissioner Craddick and staff on industry best practices in water recycling and conservation and discussed future directions, challenges and opportunities to further conserve water. Highlights of industry accomplishments discussed at the symposium include the following:

• Recycling has significantly reduced the use of fresh water in oil and gas production operations.
• Companies who gave presentations at today's symposium currently report recycling capacity of up to 1.5 million barrels of water per day; have recycled up to 50 million barrels of water since industry focus to increase recycling began in 2012; and are using recycled produced water to account for up to 100 percent of their water needs in energy production.
• The amount of produced water hauled by trucking and disposed underground has decreased, and will continue to decrease exponentially.
• Produced water is now a resource and sold as a commodity for re-use in hydraulic fracturing operations.

At the symposium, 26 companies with recycling operations were represented, and the 15 companies below gave presentations on their recycling achievements:

AES Water Solutions

Apache Corporation

Baker Hughes

Fasken Oil and Ranch, LTD

Fountain Quail Water Management, LLC

Halliburton

Laredo Petroleum

Occidental Permian, LTD

Omni Water Solutions

Pioneer Natural Resources

Purestream Services

Rock Water Energy Solutions

ThermoEnergy

Water Lens, LLC

Water Rescue Services Holdings, LLC

**************************

RRC: Energy Companies Reducing Water Use, Leading Conservation Efforts

by Gene Lockard July 11 2014

Thiscomes just over a year after a study by California-based CERES indicating that nearly 47 percent of wells were in water basins that were under stress from droughts. The fact that the oil and gas industry is helping to solve the water crisis might at first seem counter-intuitive, given the industry's reliance of water for hydraulic fracturing in shale formations in a number of states across the country. However, those within the industry realize there is much to be gained from using as little water as possible in fracking operations.

The amount of water used in oil and gas and mining operations amounts to 1 percent of the total water that is used in Texas, according to recent data by the Texas Water Development Board. That is less water than any other category of water user in the Board's Water Use Survey. To put water use of the industry into perspective, agriculture irrigation takes up 61 percent of all water used, while a combination of municipal use, manufacturing, water for steam in electric power production, and water for livestock use totals 38 percent, the Texas Water Board said.

In the short time that hydraulic fracturing has been done on a widespread and regular basis, the oil and gas industry in Texas has successfully begun water recycling technology in its production processes, Craddick said. For example, the industry had become a leader in desalination technology that could offer a way to lower the cost of converting salt water into fresh water for applications around the world. Energy producers in Texas are also adopting filtration or heat distilling processes that allow the reuse of up to 80 percent of returned fracture fluids that are generally unusable due to high salt content, and some companies have developed closed-loop production systems that rely solely on recycled water, Craddick said.

Oil and gas producers around the state of Texas recently gave credit to the RRC's amending of rules that were enacted in 2013 for helping conservation efforts in the state, and for increasing the economic viability of enhancing water-recycling efforts.

Source: Rigzone

Media

Taxonomy

• Water Reuse & Recycling
• Energy