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Houston..we have a problem....

7,313,474 Views | 28750 Replies | Last: 5 hrs ago by Bibendum 86
Dreigh
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Whatever needs to be done to pursue alternative waste water disposal will be done, and the cost will just be passed on to the end user/consumer.
PeekingDuck
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EPA doesn't like them because they have a higher methane intensity than newer production. Really though, at this point, the EPA staffers even realize the government has overstepped. The issue now is the politicians more than anything and they are doing tremendous damage.
Joseph Parrish
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One tactic of the regulatory agencies in California was to target water disposal. They would also toy with the definition of fresh water.

We started permitting 'EOR' projects in depleted reservoirs because they would allow water injection for floods.
Goose06
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buffalo chip said:

Where does the vast majority of the wastewater come from? Frac load…


Not even close. First, typical water EUR in the Delaware for a 10k WCA is 3-4 million barrels. Frac load is 0.5-0.7 million barrels. And I'm not a reserve engineer so just going off what I've been told, the % of the frac load that is ultimately recovered as part of producing the well is not anywhere close to 100%.
buffalo chip
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S
sts7049 said:

buffalo chip said:

Where does the vast majority of the wastewater come from? Frac load…
i'm pretty sure the produced water volume is higher


I have never seen stats regarding that relationship. It would definitely differ greatly by area in the PB, with unconventional disposal areas leaning towards frac load & vice versa…
Ragoo
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aggiesundevil4 said:

Operators and companies are starting to change their water disposal strategies because of the seismicity risks - recycling water from completions and production at the surface will likely be a boom business for companies like XRI that are ahead of the trend that will reduce the earthquake risks over time.
pioneer was recycling water as early as 2018 maybe earlier.
TxAg20
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Ragoo said:

aggiesundevil4 said:

Operators and companies are starting to change their water disposal strategies because of the seismicity risks - recycling water from completions and production at the surface will likely be a boom business for companies like XRI that are ahead of the trend that will reduce the earthquake risks over time.
pioneer was recycling water as early as 2018 maybe earlier.

My former company was recycling in 2009 and I seriously doubt we were the first. At that time, the RRC didn't have rules in place for recycling/produced water, so we just flowed the treated water to a frac pit to blend with freshwater.
Dreigh
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TxAg20 said:

Ragoo said:

aggiesundevil4 said:

Operators and companies are starting to change their water disposal strategies because of the seismicity risks - recycling water from completions and production at the surface will likely be a boom business for companies like XRI that are ahead of the trend that will reduce the earthquake risks over time.
pioneer was recycling water as early as 2018 maybe earlier.

My former company was recycling in 2009 and I seriously doubt we were the first. At that time, the RRC didn't have rules in place for recycling/produced water, so we just flowed the treated water to a frac pit to blend with freshwater.


If operators are already taking steps to recycle produced water, how much of a negative impact on new drilling activity in the Permian could be expected if the RRC implements their 2-year ban on deep waste water wells in the event of another earthquake?
Ogre09
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What would the logistics look like for managing via surface retention and evaporation? Lots of land, sun, and dry air out there.
Dreigh
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Ogre09 said:

What would the logistics look like for managing via surface retention and evaporation? Lots of land, sun, and dry air out there.


I'm pretty sure Russia does this all the time.
sts7049
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we could just pump it over to Colorado and fill up lake Powell and Mead
Ragoo
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Nm, I'm dumb
agdaddy04
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Ragoo said:

sts7049 said:

we could just pump it over to Colorado and fill up lake Powell and Mead
powell is in Utah and Mead, Nevada

https://coloradosun.com/2021/07/19/lake-powell-drought-blue-mesa-reservoir-drained/

You know where the water comes from that fills them up?
Ragoo
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sts7049
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TxAg20
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Dreigh said:

TxAg20 said:

Ragoo said:

aggiesundevil4 said:

Operators and companies are starting to change their water disposal strategies because of the seismicity risks - recycling water from completions and production at the surface will likely be a boom business for companies like XRI that are ahead of the trend that will reduce the earthquake risks over time.
pioneer was recycling water as early as 2018 maybe earlier.

My former company was recycling in 2009 and I seriously doubt we were the first. At that time, the RRC didn't have rules in place for recycling/produced water, so we just flowed the treated water to a frac pit to blend with freshwater.


If operators are already taking steps to recycle produced water, how much of a negative impact on new drilling activity in the Permian could be expected if the RRC implements their 2-year ban on deep waste water wells in the event of another earthquake?

Most of the larger operators outsource their water midstream. I'm guessing the cost to dispose would increase and the price of recycled water would go down. Ultimately, it just affects the economics. As it costs more to produce oil, less oil will be produced until the price of oil incentivizes producers to produce more.

Shallow disposal (San Andres, Clearfork, etc.) are options in some areas.

High cost to dipose produced water has happened before. Early in the Marcellus development, either Ohio or West Virginia wouldn't allow disposal of produced water. There, completion water was about $.01/bbl (just pump it out of the nearest river) and the cost to dispose was ~$8/bbl to truck it across the state line.
Goose06
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It was Pennsylvania that wouldn't allow new disposal wells. Had to truck it to Ohio.
BlackGoldAg2011
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Ogre09 said:

What would the logistics look like for managing via surface retention and evaporation? Lots of land, sun, and dry air out there.
just ran some real rough calcs, and looks like to handle the water from the Delaware basin using evaporation, you'd be looking at 50k acres minimum, just to keep up with current water.

as to frac load recovery, it's been a few years since i worked our permian assets, but when I did, we were recovering 100% of frac load usually within the first 90-120 days of production. just spot checked a well that's been on for 3.5 years, and it is currently at 350% of load recovered. so i can confidently say that formation water is a strong factor in water volumes in the delaware.
Goose06
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BlackGoldAg2011 said:

Ogre09 said:

What would the logistics look like for managing via surface retention and evaporation? Lots of land, sun, and dry air out there.
just ran some real rough calcs, and looks like to handle the water from the Delaware basin using evaporation, you'd be looking at 50k acres minimum, just to keep up with current water.

as to frac load recovery, it's been a few years since i worked our permian assets, but when I did, we were recovering 100% of frac load usually within the first 90-120 days of production. just spot checked a well that's been on for 3.5 years, and it is currently at 350% of load recovered. so i can confidently say that formation water is a strong factor in water volumes in the delaware.
Formation water is also a large part of the produced water in the Midland Basin. There are 2MM+ barrel water EUR wells in the Midland Basin as well and no one is pumping even 1MM barrels into a well so we are obviously recovering a lot of formation water in addition to the frac water.
Westicles
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Bingo, surprised it took anyone this long to note that water coming out is greater than water being used to frac. Id be willing to bet (no data to support this, I've just lived and worked in PB in completions and water world for a long time) that at least 80% of the wells frac'd in both Midland and Delaware Basins use some amount of recycled produced water.

It's not as if the industry in PB is behind the times on recycling, it's that recycling water does not solve 100% of the water. We have to have SWDs. I'd also say that service companies doing water recycling is a super saturated market with crappy margins right now. Ton of them out there.

What really needs to happen is economic and large scale desalination with discharge permits. That permitting process was moved to a state level from federal a couple years ago, but I haven't heard of anyone in the industry achieving a permit to discharge produced water yet, despite hardcore lobbying. I may be wrong there though.
Ogre09
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Discharge to where? Ground?
Goose06
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Ogre09 said:

Discharge to where? Ground?


Ground or river. In Appalachia they discharge into rivers I believe. Anterro spent like $300 million building a water processing plant to be able to discharge into rivers I believe. Pretty sure that plant has since been abandoned because operating expenses were like $1.00 a barrel as well.
mts6175
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aggiesundevil4 said:

Operators and companies are starting to change their water disposal strategies because of the seismicity risks - recycling water from completions and production at the surface will likely be a boom business for companies like XRI that are ahead of the trend that will reduce the earthquake risks over time.
Westicles
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Yes, streams, ground, use for agriculture, etc. The gray water (ie cleaned up sewage) from WWTPs in every municipality in the country is disposed of in this way and regulated by strict NPDES permits. But produced water has to be desalinated to freshwater levels which is relatively expensive. Over a $1/bbl from what I know (vs commercial disposal ~$0.50/bbl). So until it becomes cheaper than disposal cost or the industry is forced to, most operators or water midstream companies aren't incentivized to do so.
Ogre09
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I grew up in Midland but had never considered where processed waste water was discharged to out there in the desert. Here near the coast it goes into the river and out to the Gulf.
cptthunder
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Ran across these guys just last week.
Anyone ever have any experience with them?
aquacat water.com (take the space out between cat and water, stupid filters)
Some of the permits they claim to have seem very interesting.
Goose06
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cptthunder said:

Ran across these guys just last week.
Anyone ever have any experience with them?
aquacat water.com (take the space out between cat and water, stupid filters)
Some of the permits they claim to have seem very interesting.
I don't know anything about them. But they say on their website: "The only MOBILE wastewater treatment system that can reclaim over 100 million gallons of freshwater per year.". Converted to barrels per day thats 6,523. The typical disposal well can dispose of about 20,000 bpd in the Permian so I guess I find that stat a bit disingenuous.
one MEEN Ag
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cptthunder said:

Ran across these guys just last week.
Anyone ever have any experience with them?
aquacat water.com (take the space out between cat and water, stupid filters)
Some of the permits they claim to have seem very interesting.
I've heard about companies that can claim to remove anything from produced water, making it clean enough that you can surface discharge it.

No idea, but that looks like an awfully small operation to be able to pull out anything out of produced water. And, I'm not seeing any information about what happens to the concentrated waste they produce as part of making clean water.

Judging how hard companies fought to keep their fracing chemicals from being publicly listed, I'd be shocked if this group and their 3 18 wheelers can pull every element out of produced water and leave you with Dasani on the other end.
Sea Speed
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Probably a dumb question, but what is the need for all the chemicals added to the water?
Pasquale Liucci
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Hard to poison the environment without them
Sea Speed
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Captain Charles Vane said:

Hard to poison the environment without them
Dan Scott
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ExxonMobil now has a higher market cap than Tesla.
htxag09
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Sea Speed said:

Probably a dumb question, but what is the need for all the chemicals added to the water?

Various reasons…biocides to prevent corrosive bacteria, corrosion inhibitors to also prevent corrosion, scale inhibitors, friction reducers to help reduce treating pressure, acid to assist in opening shale fractures, dissolving of sand, rock, etc.
Sea Speed
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Thanks for the info
Ogre09
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Dan Scott said:

ExxonMobil now has a higher market cap than Tesla.



As they should. They produce more value and make more money.
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