Produced Water Treatment Facilities In Short Supply

Hundreds of new disposal wells and wastewater facilities will be needed near shale sites to treat the anticipated explosion in produced water, according to wastewater treatment manager Brian Kait.

The volume "is expected to rise to almost 44 million barrels in 2018, according to Stephen Hughes, design engineering manager at Tetra Tech," the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported.

To Kait, this is an opportunity for wastewater facilities. Kait is the general manager at Fairmont Brine Processing, and he plans to open another wastewater treatment plant, also in West Virginia.

"The firm has secured a 600-acre site in Wheeling, WV for the new facility, which will be able to break down produced water from oil and gas wells into distilled water, salt, and other byproducts through a patented evaporation and crystallization process," the report said.

In essence, "Kait's big idea is to wedge a wastewater treatment plant in between the locations where shale producers drill in Pennsylvania and where they must truck their produced water hundreds of miles west to pump it into deep disposal wells in Ohio," the report said.

He described billboards that would say something like, “If you were treating your water instead of forever taking it out of circulation, you’d already be at your destination," the report said.

The energy industry faces major challenges when it comes to water.

"The biggest product of the U.S. petroleum industry is not oil, gas or condensate but water -- billions and billions of gallons containing dissolved salts, grease and even naturally occurring radioactive materials," a Reuters column recently reported.

"In 2007, when the shale revolution was still in its infant stages, the U.S. oil and gas industry was already producing more than 20 billion barrels of wastewater per year, according to researchers at the Argonne National Laboratory," the column said. 

The energy industry is increasingly looking to treat and reuse produced water. For instance, Industrial Water Permitting and Recycling Consultants is a company that has jumped on this trend.

The company "helps operators navigate Colorado’s complex regulatory environment and permitting processes to find better uses for produced water than just throwing it away," the Greeley Tribune recently reported.

For more on treating produced water, check out Water Online's Produced Water Solution Center.