Recycling Frack Water -- "Produced Water"

Updates

December 24, 2013: Rigzone is reporting (unfortunately, a long article that didn't say much) --

Water recycling represents a major opportunity for firms that provide equipment and services to the shale gas industry, according to Johan Pfeiffer, FMC Technologies Inc. vice president for Surface Technologies.

And the opportunity is greater outside of the United States in countries where the cost of water disposal is high due to geographical and regulatory pressures, Pfeiffer said in a presentation to Tudor, Pickering, Holt & Co.'s Global Shale Conference in London at the end of November.

Speaking about the shale gas industry from an oilfield services point of view, Pfeiffer noted: "The operators in North America are trying to get as much production as possible out of the well pad. In order to do this, they use increasing complexity in the well that provides an opportunity for service providers."

July 14, 2013: Halliburton's process for recycling frack water is called "H20Forward."

"If you really think about it," he continued, "as an industry we make more water than we make hydrocarbons. In fact, we make about 3-5 barrels of water per barrel of hydrocarbons." Some have told him that their primary job was to produce water, and oil was the byproduct.

In spite of a literal flood of produced water available, it historically has been injected, at certain cost, instead of being reused in the fracturing process because it was "too dirty." With unacceptable amounts of total dissolve solids (TDS) and total suspended solids (TSS) it would clog formations instead of placing proppants and opening formations to the flow of hydrocarbons.

Before Dale went to Halliburton he worked for a water treatment company that was asked by a client to develop a way to use city effluent in cooling towers. As Dale pondered the question, including costs to clean the water, then to dispose of those removed substances, it came to him: "When we looked at the economics, we realized that, what if we just change the chemistry that allows them to use that water so you don't have to take stuff out?" He referred to this as "impaired waters." The price point changed dramatically when those costs were figured.

Halliburton's product/service is called H2O Forward "that allows customers to take these waste streams and use them for the supply chain needs," Dale explained. He was quick to point out that this does include some water treatment, but due to changes in frac fluids, the water requires much less treatment than does water processed for use with conventional fluids.

Original Post 

I've posted once or twice about "produced water" -- recycled frack water. Don sent me the link to an article on the subject.

PrairieBizMagazine is reporting:

About 40 percent of the water used for fracking flows back to the well surface, but re-using that water is made difficult due to its high saline content, according to research conducted by the Energy & Environmental Research Center at the University of North Dakota. Therefore, water used for fracking is primarily fresh water, and flowback water is treated before being disposed of in deep injection wells.

There is more background at the link, but here is where it gets interesting:

In March, Halliburton announced that it has commercialized technology to recycle frack flowback water, which the company refers to as produced water, and that it has completed more than 60 wells and 280 fracturing stages in the Permian and Bakken formations using this approach. According to the company, the technology uses electricity to destabilize and coagulate contaminants in the water, which can then be removed, allowing for the remaining water to be re-used for fracking.

Walter Dale, Halliburton global strategic business manager – water management solutions, says the technology’s commercialization represents a “paradigm shift” in the need for fresh water for fracking operations. “This is no longer a technical issue; this is a function of logistics,” he said in a statement. “Customers can now use produced water on unconventional wells with no loss of well productivity at a net economic benefit while minimizing the overall environmental impact.”

Halliburton says its technology has been proven to save up to $400,000 per well in the Bakken.

I assume others will research the technology including Heckmann-->Nuveera Environmental Solutions.

But it looks like it is time for a new tag: produced_water.

By the way, the linked article at PrairieBiz referenced a Halliburton-electricity-based process. There is also a vortex-based process which will work nicely for cleaning oil from oil spills into flowing water, such as rivers.