water disposal

As oil production grows by millions of barrels in the Permian, so does the water. A report from Wood Mackenzie offers an estimate of the cost and who will be affected most.

Getting rid of wastewater from onshore wells has become an increasingly costly problem for oil producers as US crude output surged in recent years, especially in the new shale fields from Texas to North Dakota.

If crude prices, rig counts, and tight oil production demonstrate a stronger upward trend in the months to come, US shale operators may find themselves with more produced water than they bargained for.

Water production normally increases as fields mature, and two main ways exist to deal with the produced water. One is to dispose of the produced water into dedicated disposal wells. The other is to reinject the produced water for pressure maintenance or sweep efficiency.

Earthquake in Cushing, OK -- home to the largest oil storage facility in the world -- leads to further regulatory action on disposal wells in the area.

Research and development firm Battelle is working on a new induced-seismicity study that aims to help wastewater disposal well operators in Ohio stay on the good side of state regulators.

Industry regulators in Oklahoma have rolled out broad new restrictions on more than 600 disposal wells as part of the largest action of its kind taken in response to earthquakes.

A surge in earthquakes tightly clustered in southern Kansas that followed the large increase in produced water injections prompted the state to cut the daily limits on disposal wells in that area to see if that will help solve the problem.

The objective of this paper is to detail how water quality and injection pressure are deduced when uncertainties of input data are considered.