{"id":16499,"date":"2017-10-12T12:54:39","date_gmt":"2017-10-12T16:54:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/energyexchange\/?p=16499"},"modified":"2018-02-26T18:09:47","modified_gmt":"2018-02-26T23:09:47","slug":"getting-dangerously-creative-with-oil-and-gas-wastewater","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/energyexchange\/2017\/10\/12\/getting-dangerously-creative-with-oil-and-gas-wastewater\/","title":{"rendered":"Getting dangerously creative with oil and gas wastewater"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
Look before you leap \u2013 why learning more about oilfield wastewater is critical to reducing health and safety risks.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The oil and gas industry has a massive wastewater problem. And if the growing dialogue about new ways of dealing with it are any indication, it may get worse if we aren\u2019t careful.<\/p>\n

Cost concerns, pressure to conserve water, and other factors have led some oil and gas companies to consider new ways to manage or repurpose wastewater \u2013 including using it to irrigate crops. That could create more problems than it solves.<\/p>\n

Managing the massive amount of oil and gas wastewater has been a challenge for energy companies for generations. Some wells produce up to 10 times more wastewater than oil. In the United States, companies produce nearly 900 billion gallons of wastewater a year. That\u2019s enough to fill over 1,000 football stadiums.<\/p>\n

Ongoing Risks<\/strong><\/p>\n

Oil and gas wastewater is often many times saltier than sea water \u2013 and can ruin soil for generations if large amounts spill or leak during storage or transport. \u00a0In fact, landowners with a long history of oil and gas production on their lands know that a wastewater spill can cause much more long term damage to their land than an oil spill.<\/p>\n

Case-in-point, in the 1920s oilfield wastewater was managed by releasing it directly onto West Texas soil, before the industry and regulators fully realized the negative consequences of this practice. It created the Texon Scar, a patch of dead earth so large it can be seen from space.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Beyond salt, this waste can contain any number of nearly 1,600 chemicals that are either present in groundwater or known to be used in the well construction process \u2013 chemicals ranging from ethylene glycol (antifreeze) to hydrochloric acid. And yet, regulator-approved chemical detection methods only exist for about a quarter of them. This means that we can\u2019t know if certain toxic chemicals are present, and the energy companies can\u2019t say they aren\u2019t.<\/p>\n

Quakes, Cost and Climate<\/strong><\/p>\n

Industry\u2019s most common solution to this deluge of wastewater has been to pump it into specialized disposal or enhanced recovery wells, but a number of factors have companies (and sometimes regulators) looking at alternatives.<\/p>\n

One reason?\u00a0 A dramatic increase in the number of earthquakes in some oil and gas regions, has raised questions about this once tried-and-true disposal method. In Oklahoma, for example, regulators limited wastewater disposal volumes<\/a> after a rash of earthquakes shook the region (the number of quakes dropped afterwards).<\/p>\n

And disposing of wastewater can be expensive. Depending on the well and its location, water management \u2013 including trucking, treatment, and disposal \u2013 could be the single greatest expense of the operation.<\/p>\n

Finally, there\u2019s no doubt that concerns about fresh water use and protection will only increase as climate change exacerbates prolonged droughts in a number of key energy-producing states like Texas, California, New Mexico and Oklahoma.<\/p>\n

What now?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

All of these factors have insiders looking for new ways to repurpose wastewater, but perceived near-term pressures should not push decision-makers towards options that could create new, long-term risks to water and other resources.<\/p>\n

Some options, like recycling industry\u2019s wastewater to fracture new wells, are viable with current management practices \u2013 assuming leaks and spills are minimized<\/a>. Others, however, like using treated wastewater for agricultural purposes, come with a number of risks and unanswered questions<\/a>, like: how can companies and regulators ensure the water is \u201cclean enough\u201d for new uses? And what are the long term impacts to the soil and crops? What about other health or toxicological impacts? We don\u2019t know, and that\u2019s the problem.<\/p>\n

Moving forward with new management practices before we know more about what\u2019s in wastewater could be dangerous; the Texon Scar is the perfect example of that. Operators in the 1920s didn\u2019t know their decision to release wastewater onto soil could be problematic, but that lack of information resulted in a vegetative dead zone that has lasted for nearly a century despite countless hours and dollars spent on restoration.<\/p>\n

Our advice is fairly simple: not so fast. Before industry adopts (or regulators allow) new uses for this polluted water, we need to learn a lot more about what\u2019s in this water and how it could threaten human health and the environment. In other words, we need to look before we leap, and everyone\u2019s eyes \u2013 companies\u2019, regulators\u2019, scientists\u2019 and citizens\u2019 \u2013 need to be wide open.<\/p>\n

EDF is certainly not the only group advising caution. In the last issue<\/a> of Air and Waste Management<\/a> Association\u2019s magazine, several academics and industry experts outlined the various challenges of new wastewater uses. \u00a0And the Ground Water Protection Council<\/a> has announced a project to define the types of important questions state regulators need to be asking and answering now to make smarter decisions on produced water in the future.\u00a0 That\u2019s good. We NEED to spend time getting this right. Let\u2019s not leap before we look.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The oil and gas industry has a massive wastewater problem. And if the growing dialogue about new ways of dealing with it are any indication, it may get worse if we aren\u2019t careful. Cost concerns, pressure to conserve water, and other factors have led some oil and gas companies to consider new ways to manage …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":69512,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[693,105758],"tags":[100168,663],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-16499","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-natural-gas","category-produced-water-natural-gas","tag-produced-water","tag-water"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nGetting dangerously creative with oil and gas wastewater - Energy Exchange<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/energyexchange\/2017\/10\/12\/getting-dangerously-creative-with-oil-and-gas-wastewater\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Getting dangerously creative with oil and gas wastewater - Energy Exchange\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The oil and gas industry has a massive wastewater problem. 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