Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by jffree1 on October 19, 2010 at 5:21

Thanks, KJ, for putting this conference on your schedule. I, for one, will be looking forward to your report. Water issues should concern all of us and a fortunate few will find themselves in a position to possibly profit from water sales, ROWs and such. I'm happy to hear you are attending.

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Permalink Reply by dbob on October 19, 2010 at 7:27

King John

Draft environmental flows regulations for the Sabiner River in Texas were posted as of October 15, 2010. The basic outcome appears to be a further restriction of surface water availability from the State of Texas. I'd love to know if anything is said about this topic.

Best regards

Dbob

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Permalink Reply by king john on October 20, 2010 at 9:50

Draft environmental flows regulations for the Sabiner River in Texas...got dbob. i was looking over the topics being covered and i think this should fall under a couple of them. if i have the opportunity i will ask specifically in the Q&A session.
kj

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Permalink Reply by Keith Mauck (Site Publisher) on October 20, 2010 at 10:57

I'd lke to hear a little bit about recycling & biodegradable technology and the costs involved.

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Permalink Reply by jffree1 on October 20, 2010 at 12:21

I think that's pretty important, too. How much water do they think can be recovered and used again in another frack (there's that word again) job?

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Permalink Reply by dbob on October 20, 2010 at 14:12

The initial flow back is generally going to be fresh and potentially re-usable, but with caution: you don't want to put it into a frac pond that is also used for wildlife/fishing/livestock due to the additives that might be present. If you've got a dedicated storage reservoir, great, otherwise probably a non starter.

The later stages of flowback are more likely to be saltly and not directly suitable for re-use. You'll either need to run reverse osmosis or distillation on it, which is energy intensive, or dillute it with freshwater.

Most of the haynesville/bossier shale are only flowing back 25-40% of the frac water, most of which will be salty. net with the current state of recycling, it probably only makes sense to recycle 10-15% of the total frac volume. Most operators aren't doing that due to the logistical difficulty. In areas of the country with less water availability and/or lower TDS in the flowback, recycling is more practical.

Also, many reservoir/frac engineers are reluctant to move water from one well to another for fear of causing fouling problems.

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