produced water

The electric vehicle industry is creating a “dot-com” boom around the energy transition, spinning off a multitude of startups as it creates its own supply chain of new technologies in battery manufacturing.

Skyrocketing demand for the commodity has created a lithium deficit that could slow the pace of the energy transition. Industry is scrambling to find new sources by opening new mines or devising new technologies to extract lithium from brines, including brines found in produced water from oil and gas operations.

The paper presents a system for separation of water in downhole horizontal wells in which the water produced from the well is not lifted to the surface but reinjected into the reservoir.

Even though total produced volumes are projected to hit new record highs in the coming years, treated water is expected to be comparatively lower than in the past, despite water disposal practices increasing oilfield seismic activity, with earthquakes nearly doubling in West Texas alone in 2021.

When it comes to produced water from US shale plays, it’s either recycle and reuse or throw it away—and both are easier said than done.

This case history explores a multiwell sectional development in the Delaware Basin by a small operator who reduced drilling and completion costs, along with lease operating expenses, by turning undesirable produced water into an asset.

A produced-water management framework is presented, forming part of an upstream-effluent management policy, to address the minimization and ultimate elimination of treated and untreated produced-water discharge.

This paper is the second of a two-part series. It covers facilities problems caused by iron, injectivity problems caused by iron, and the mitigation of colloidal iron-related problems.

Lagoon becomes a multibasin player in water management while WES locks down assets that could drive future deals.

A review of the properties of iron compounds and their impact in shale produced water treatment with an emphasis on their colloidal forms. A wide range of problems is associated with these compounds in produced water including emulsion stabilization, oil-coated solids, pad formation in separators, pipeline solids, and plugging of water disposal formations.