Posted on 08/22/2018 1:22:42 PM PDT by zeestephen
Fledgling companies, many backed by private equity, are rushing to help shale drillers deal with one of their trickiest problems: what to do with the vast volumes of wastewater that are a byproduct of fracking wells...Moving water by pipe costs anywhere from 60 cents to $1.50 a barrel compared with more than $2 by truck...
(Excerpt) Read more at msn.com ...
Math error. Good thing I was pinged later. It’s 42 gallons in a barrel and 4 cents for 10 gallons of desalination. So just 16 cents to desalinate a barrel of water.
If 4 cents per 10 gallons is correct, it’s just 16.8 cents per barrel.
However, you also need to dispose of the salt and the toxins, store the clean water, and transport it to the crops.
In any event, how much are farmers willing to pay for irrigation, and is the top soil any good in that part of Texas?
I’d be surprised if the Free Republic folks on this thread were the first people in America to think about this, which probably means that irrigation in that area is not commercially viable.
It's viable, just not a lot of water.
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Each company's frac fluid is proprietary information. Even the EPA does know what is used.
Based on the article, it sounds like the huge amount of brine water is locked in just as tight as the hydrocarbon liquids and gas.
Once the hydrocarbons are depleted in a fracking well, the cost of extracting irrigation water would become untenable.
If the EPA does not know, they must not have as good of laboratories as I thought.
The EPA has been overhyping toxicity for decades.
They can test a private water to find only natural occurring methane, but they will not detect anything else.
The best thing to do with it is to tidy it up a little bit and frac the next well with it. Fresh water is scarce in the Permian Basin.
Fifty cents for 200 gallon from a large plant?
Testing for what they need to add to the mix at the Blender.
Have no idea what frac gel return would be like.
Looks like a watered down milky solution ? Seen this on lots of Farm to Market roads in the panhandle of Texas and wondered what it was ......
Desalination costs 4 cents per 10 gallons. Thats $1.68 per barrel.
Ah, I think I see it. That number should be 16.8 cents a barrel. A barrel is 42 gallons.
I have asked several engineers why we can’t frac with salt water. They say it has something to do with the ability to create gels that increase the viscosity of the frac fluid so that it can carry sand out into the wings of the frac. Some chemist needs to come up with a new mousetrap.
Try to take a saltwater shower ... lather (nope) rinse (nope)
Few seconds under fresh water all is good
Salt water (heavy brine) is only good for killing a well.
Sounds like my six years at school in Lubbock. A lot of bad hair days.
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