Disposal: $6 to $60/m 3 ($1 to $10/BBL) Freshwater: $0.5 to $6/m 3 ($0.1 to $1/BBL) Re-use: many operators reuse flow back and produced water, and the cost is largely linked to storage, transport, and any treatment to reduce particulate load (microfiltration) and scalants (chemical softening).
What are the costs of hydraulic fracturing?
Fracking is expensive, but still less costly than the methods used to obtain oil from the wells mentioned above. According to Reuters, estimates put the break-even point for fracking at around $50 per barrel, but other estimates put it as low as $30 per barrel.
What are the external costs of hydraulic fracturing?
Fracking damages the environment, threatens public health, and affects communities in ways that can impose a multitude of costs: Drinking water contamination – Fracking brings with it the potential for spills, blowouts and well failures that contaminate groundwater supplies.
What are 3 environmental impacts of fracking?
Hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” is revolutionizing oil and gas drilling across the country. However, without rigorous safety regulations, it can poison groundwater, pollute surface water, impair wild landscapes, and threaten wildlife.
How does fracking affect water?
Fracking can contaminate water supplies if it is not done properly, because the fracking fluid injected into rock to enable gas to be released often contains chemicals.
What are some potential environmental costs of fracking?
Air pollution and water contamination due to the toxic chemicals used in hydraulic fracturing are the greatest concerns within fracking sites, while the need for wastewater disposal and shrinking water supplies are also pressing issues directly related to the procedure.
What are the costs pros and benefits cons of fracking?
The pros and cons of frackingPro: alternative to coal. ... Con: a question of demand. ... Pro: access to materials. ... Con: risk of earthquakes. ... Pro: job creation. ... Con: air and water pollution.
Do the benefits of fracking outweigh the costs?
We discovered that for the average household living in a community where fracking takes place the benefits exceed the costs—indeed, it is worth about $2,000 per year to them.
Does fracking affect groundwater?
In fact, scientists and researchers from governmental organizations, universities, and nonprofits confirm that fracking does not contaminate groundwater.
Is fracking cheaper than renewable energy?
Considering the increasing environmental cost, wind and solar power become more economic than fracking. Wind and solar power is renewable energy, which means it is clean, affordable and theoretically inexhaustible. Compared to fracking, wind and solar power produces no emission to our environmental.
How is water used during the hydraulic fracturing process?
Using Brackish Groundwater Much of the rest is brackish (slightly salty1) groundwater, used in the oil and gas industry for hydraulic fracturing, for water injection to improve oil recovery, and in refineries.
How is water used in hydraulic fracturing?
Water and sand can make up more than 99.5 percent of the fluid used to hydraulically fracture a well. Water acts as the primary carrier fluid in hydraulic fracturing.
What is a more sustainable way to deal with fracking wastewater?
Replace fresh water with recycled water or brine: Besides using water-less fracking system, recycled water and brine also works perfectly in fracking system. Using recycled water and brine conserves freshwater as well as reduces the water pollution caused by traditional fracking systems.
How is water hardness removed?
Water hardness is removed by chemical softening and particulates are removed by bag filters. New developments in chemical softening system design remove pains of the past, such as over or under dosing, poor control, large physical footprint and lack of modularity.
What are the advantages of freshwater storage and transportation over produced water storage?
One advantage of freshwater storage and transportation over produced water storage is that it requires less containment.
What is chemical softening?
Dosing: Conventional chemical softening systems use set dosing rates, which result in poor precision on constantly changing shale waters. This can lead to underdosing, which may cause scale, or overdosing, which results in wasted chemicals and increased operating costs. Modern chemical softening systems that use sensor-driven precision dosing avoid these problems by reducing waste and maintaining treatment system performance.
What are the advantages of disposal wells?
One advantage of disposal wells is that they dispose of all residuals, and as noted above, disposal costs and volume can be limited through treatments that pre-concentrate.
What temperature does salt water boil?
Water boils at 100 °C (212 °F), and most engine waste heat sources are 85-95 °C, which is not sufficient to evaporate water. However, the Saltworks’ AirBreather does not involve boiling water, instead it humidifies air.
Is there a one size fits all solution for shale?
Although there are many water management options available for shale operators, there is no one-size-fits-all solution. It is important to understand the costs, alternatives, and technical limitations of each option and develop a blended water management strategy to balance costs and risks. Start with identifying the costs ...
What is hydro fracking?
Hydro-fracking or Natural Gas Hydraulic Fracturing is the fracturing of rock by pressurized liquid to extract natural gas. The process was created by Haillburton Inc., Schlumberger Inc., and Messina Inc. in 1947. The technique is mixing sand, water, and chemicals in which the mixture is injected at high pressure into a wellbore to generate small fractures (< 1mm) along with gas such as petroleum, uranium-bearing solution, and brine water may travel to the well. Wellbore is a drill hole used for the purpose of withdrawal or examination of natural resources such as natural gases or oil where a well may be produced as resource for extended period. The most common natural gas in Shale gas which are fine-grained sedimentary rocks that can be rich sources of petroleum. Natural gas is used for 24% of America’s energy demand. It heats 51% of American households.
How much water does a well need?
Each time they build a well they need 3,500,000 gallons of water when fracking one well. It is stated that upwards of 70% of fracking fluid remains in the ground after fracking and is not biodegradable. Researchers suspect 65 of the components used in hydro-fracking are hazardous to humans.
What is the Safe Drinking Water Act?
The Safe Drinking Water Act is a federal law that ensures the quality of American drinking water. The law protects drinking water and its sources: rivers, lakes, streams, and ground water wells although they do not regulate private wells which serve fewer than 25 persons.
Is hydro fracking dangerous?
Although fracking provides millions of jobs these jobs are dangerous, exposing workers to chemicals with long term effects that are still unknown to us. Many people wonder if hydro-fracking will bring the U.S. more energy independence but in fact it won’t.
What is hydraulic fracturing?
Hydraulic fracturing is the process of pumping fluid into a wellbore at an injection rate too high for the formation to accept without breaking. During injection, the formation’s resistance to flow increases, and the pressure in the wellbore increases to a value called the break-down pressure, which is the sum of the in-situ compressive stress and the strength of the formation. When the formation “breaks down,” a fracture is formed, and the injected fluid flows through it.
Where does hydraulic fracturing water come from?
Most water used in hydraulic fracturing comes from surface water sources like lakes, rivers, aquifers, and municipal supplies , which may have to be hauled over long distances. But groundwater can be used to supplement surface water supplies where it is plentiful.
What are the factors that drive the conservation of water?
Factors driving the conservation of water include the limitations in sources of fresh water in areas with a high rate of development, attractive economics of recycling compared with tanker truck transportation costs, minimization of road traffic to reduce environmental impacts, and water disposal costs.
What happens to water after stimulation treatment?
After stimulation treatment, water used to fracture the well, in amounts as large as 50%, can rise back to the surface, along with the initial production, as flowback water . Flowback and produced waters, both part of the production stream, must be separated from the formation.
What percentage of fracking fluid is water?
Water comprises 95 percent of typical fracking fluid, followed by 4.5 percent sand and 0.5 percent other chemical additives. The chemicals serve multiple functions, including limiting the growth of bacteria and preventing corrosion of the well casing.
How does water management affect oil production?
Water management can significantly add to the cost and environmental footprint of oil production and innovations in water management can provide significant economic and environmental gains. New treatment technologies make recycling of water recovered from hydraulic fracturing possible.
How many additives are needed to fracture a well?
The conditions of the well being fractured determine the number of chemical additives used. Typically, very low concentrations of between three and 12 additive chemicals will be used, depending on the characteristics of the water and the formation being fractured. Each component serves a specific purpose.
What are the environmental concerns associated with hydraulic fracturing?
The principal environmental concerns associated with hydraulic fracturing projects are water and soil contamination that can result from the processes and handling of the fluids as well as the large quantities of water necessary to undertake fracking and seismic activity that might be induced. Large volumes of water are withdrawn from surface or groundwaters and mixed with sand and chemical additives including biocides, hydrochloric acid, corrosion inhibitors, borate salts, friction reducers, gelling agents, potassium chloride, oxygen scavengers, scale inhibitors and surfactants.
Why is horizontal drilling so successful?
The numbers have grown rapidly particularly because of the introduction of horizontal drilling techniques, which allow formerly inaccessible rock formations to be reached and tapped for hydrocarbons. This method has grown and been successful in the U.S. and other countries for extracting hydrocarbons for fuel and other uses.
What is underground injection?
When possible, underground injection is the primary method for management and disposal of wastewaters from oil and gas producing facilities. These are regulated by the Underground Injection Control provisions of the 1974 Safe Drinking Water Act and implemented by states along with their additional provisions. Enhanced oil recovery, disposal and hydrocarbon storage are covered in the Class II well designations. Class II fluids are primarily brines (salt water) that are generated while producing oil and gas.
What are the chemicals in water?
Apart from the chemical additives to be managed, the natural water that is surfaced may contain very high levels of dissolved solids (salts), toxic metals, radionuclides and hydrocarbons. Total dissolved solids (TDS) values may range from less than 1,000 milligrams per liter (mg/L) to hundreds of thousands of mg/L (sea water typically contains about 35,000 to 40,000 mg/L ). In addition to the predominant sodium and chloride, the salts content can include elevated concentrations of bromide, bicarbonate, sulfate, calcium, magnesium, barium, strontium, radium, organic chemicals and heavy metals. The management challenge is to safely dispose, treat, or reuse those waters without damaging the local groundwater or downstream surface waters and potential drinking water sources.
Is hydraulic fracturing wastewater a chemical?
Hydraulic fracturing wastewaters are complex saline and organic chemical mixtures, and they create treatment and disposal challenges that can, however, be met when economics permit. This very brief summary is derived extensively from the USEPA’s 600-page draft report along with hundreds of pages of Appendices of the Assessment of the Potential Impacts of Hydraulic Fracturing for Oil and Gas on Drinking Water Resources (External Review Draft, EPA/600/R-15/047, June 2015) from the process that was initiated in 2009.
Can you reuse wastewater brines?
Reuse of wastewater brines in the hydraulic fracturing process would be an ideal practice, and it is increasing, especially in the Marcellus Shale region, because no or minimal treatment might be necessary, and the amounts of fresh water needed are reduced as well as less total wastewater to be treated and disposed of at the surface. However, repeated use may accumulate the contaminants to ultimately be managed either by treatment, injection or disposal.
