Energy firms are exploring recycling options for an industry that consumes up to 5 million gallons per well. That IS a lot of water. Companies are racing to find ways to recycle the water used in hydraulic fracking, chasing an emerging market perhaps worth billions of dollars. From energy industry giants Halliburton Corp. and Schlumberger Ltd. to smaller outfits such as Ecologix Environmental Systems LLC these companies are pursuing technologies to reuse the “frack water” that comes out of the wells after hydraulic fracturing or “fracking”---the process of using high pressure water and chemicals to coax oil and natural gas out of shale-rock formations.
While the recycled water is not cleaned sufficiently for drinking purposes, it can be cleaned of chemicals and rock debris and reused to frack additional wells, which could sharply cut the costs that energy companies face securing and disposing of the used water. Schlumberger predicts that a million new wells will be fracked around the world between now and 2035 and further predict that reducing freshwater usage will no longer be just an environmental issue.
In North Dakota’s Bakken Shale, one current fracking hot spots, fresh water delivered to the drilling site costs between 10 and 16 cents per gallon. That is according to Continental Resources Inc. an Oklahoma City based oil driller. Water alone can cost upwards of $400,000 per fracturing attempt—and Continental plans more than 200 attempts next year.
Energy companies are also struggling with how to get rid of the tainted water that comes out of the fractured well; the fluid, which contains a mix of chemicals and salts, must be taken to a licensed disposal facility.
While the cost of getting rid of millions of gallons varies from state to state, it can be substantial. In Texas, where there are plenty of emptied oil fields, companies can often inject the waste water into spent well, which are generally older conventional wells that have been converted to accept oil-field waste water. But in places like Pennsylvania, companies have to haul the water hundreds of miles to the nearest injection wells. Injection wells pump the untreated oil-field liquid deep underground into porous rock formations for permanent disposal. There are less than 10 working injection wells in Pennsylvania, so most of its wastewater is carried by trucks to Ohio. These injection wells are controversial after being linked by some scientists to minor earthquakes. The injected liquids are essentially thought to lubricate faults and accelerate movement that causes tremors. Ohio only recently began issuing permits for new injection wells, after imposing rules to prevent tremors.
Now the system currently under development by Halliburton is arranged on a group of 3 semi-trailer units that are positioned at the fracking site. These trailers contain apparatus to provide a 5 step clean-up process and the recovered water is right there for reuse. Considerable cost saving. The 5 steps are---
1) Water Use; fracking a shale–gas well uses as much a 5 million gallons of water. Up to 40% of it returns to the surface containing hydrocarbon, heavy metals, solids and bacteria.
2) This contaminated water is temporarily stored in a collection pit.
3) The first trailer contains banks of Electro-coagulation cells that remove the undesirable material by clotting and suspending in water.
4) This is then passed into a process wherein the PH factor is adjusted to speed up coagulation, then returned through the Electro-coagulation trailer to maintain the desired PH for optimum coagulation.
5) Filtration and reuse. This step removes any remaining suspended material; this water can be reused for future fracking.
Chesapeake Energy Corp. has begun recycling 100% of the water it retrieves from wells in northern Pennsylvania. In addition to cutting the company’s costs, recycling reduces the number of trucks on the road ferrying clean water to drilling sites, easing a sore point with local residents. When perfected the cost savings are substantial and without doubt “fracking” is the wave of the future for both oil and NG, natural gas production particularly in the western hemisphere.
FUTURE THOUGHT—Researching companies are moving away from using water entirely to fracture rock, with efforts aimed at using propane gel and compressed air. Moving away from liquids entirely, however, is still several years away—IF early laboratory work can be successfully applied in the field. Several big Ifs.
INTERESTING--
I am an electrical engineer involved in designing instrumentation and control systems used on oilfield pressure pumping equipment (well completion, stimulation and conveyance). In the last 30+ years I worked for both Schlumberger and Baker Hughes and I have been involved in the design of pumping units used for hydraulic fracturing. I’ve been an I.E.E.E. member for many years.
Your article for the most part is factually accurate and reflects favorably on our industry, but I would like to add a few details that may be of interest to your readers.
Fracturing is used to improve the production of oil and gas wells, but there are other applications such as geothermal wells. Many wells are not economical to produce without stimulation; which includes fracturing. Fracturing of oil wells in the 1860’s was done using nitroglycerine. Transportation and handling of nitroglycerine got a lot of people killed. Hydraulic fracturing started 1947. Since then tens of thousands of wells have been fractured all over the world and there are very few confirmed cases of ground water contamination directly related to the fracturing process.
It’s interesting that fracturing wasn’t on the mind of the public until 5 or 6 years ago when politicians and the popular news media decided to use it to demonize the oil and gas industry. “Journalists” in the popular media came up with the derisive word “frack” which people in the oil and gas industry find very offensive. You won’t find the word “frack” in any dictionary or unmodified computer spell checker. There is no K in hydraulic fracturing or the common industry short-hand term fracing. It’s obvious that most of them don’t take the time to verify their facts. It’s much easier to parrot something that they copied from other un-informed sources. It is rare to see them use information from API (American Petroleum Institute), the Society of Petroleum Engineers or even less scholarly but reasonable accurate sources like Wikipedia. API is a professional engineering organization representing the oil and gas industry just as I.E.E.E. represents electrical and electronics engineering.
Hydraulic fracturing is the propagation of fractures in rock formations through use of a pressurized fluid; typically water. While some wells are fractured using “slick water” many wells are fractured with using a slurry consisting of water, a guar (food additive) based polymer vicosifier and “proppant” (sand, ceramic beads, or bauxite). Water and proppant make up 99.5% of most slurries used in hydraulic fracturing. After the rock is fractured and the pressure is released, the “proppant” stays in the fracture to create a high porosity channel for the oil and gas to flow into the well bore.
In our industry the water that flows out of the well is called “produced water”. In addition to hydraulic fracturing, produced water also comes from other sources. Even wells that have not been fractured can be sources of produced water. The title of your article is a bit misleading. Drillers aren’t reusing the water; it’s the pumping service companies who are doing the hydraulic fracturing. The drillers are long gone by the time the produced water is available for reuse. The use of pits to store the water is illegal in many places it is becoming a common practice to store the water in enclosed tanks.
Baker Hughes is an industry leader with several methods to re-cycle produced water; including the very popular H2Pro electro-coagulation unit.
The API Journal and publications from the Society of Petroleum Engineers are an excellent sources for scholarly articles on hydraulic fracturing and other topics pertinent to the oil and gas industry. I really enjoy the articles that you have written about electronics, but it might be wise to stick to topics of which you have first-hand knowledge lest you fall into the trap of parroting information from uninformed sources.
Posted by: Paul Rawlings | December 15, 2012 at 11:30 PM
To Paul Rawlings---Thanks for your very informative reply--Your criticism is noted------sincerely Carl Schwab
Posted by: carl schwab | December 16, 2012 at 12:25 PM