SALT LAKE CITY -- A Research Partnership To Secure Energy For America (RPSEA) small-producer program conference gave researchers a chance to highlight their findings from a RPSEA-sponsored produced-water management study in Utah’s Uinta and Paradox basins.

Michael Vanden Berg, senior geologist and petroleum section manager at the Utah Geological Survey, said that 2013 oil and gas production in Uintah and Duchesne counties has increased about 300% and produced water is increasing at a similar rate.

Vanden Berg said, “For the next year we are expecting similar increases. The ongoing question is ‘what’s the best way to manage fresh and produced water from drilling to completion?’ ”

Dave Tabert, energy and minerals program manager, Utah Geological Survey, discussed Department of Natural Resources study findings for produced water and its management in the Uinta.

“The state program has several study goals on water use in the basin, including production water reuse; fresh water consumption; location and volume of water used during drilling; and completion and examining systems to handle produced water,” according to Tabert.

State records from 2012-2013 indicates that water use in Duchesne County increased from 3 million barrels to 4 million barrels, and in Uintah County from 6.1 to 6.5 million barrels. “One of the reasons for increased Uintah County water consumption is because more of these wells had large frack jobs for extended horizontal wells,” said Tabert.

Tabert noted a unique and cost-saving system of reusing water that was developed by Anadarko Petroleum (the Anadarko Completion Technology System) in which the company captures and transfers flowback fluids between well pads with temporary pipelines.

According to Tabert, “Anadarko has reduced fresh water usage by more than 90%. They save up to $50,000 on a four-well pad (assuming a $1 per barrel cost for the water). Reduced trucking eliminates emissions and road dust. It has also reduced the number of tanks from about 100 tanks to 20 tanks for a four-well pad.

“State records show that most produced water has been put into deep aquifers with injection wells. “Secondarily, water is put into commercial or private operator evaporation and disposal ponds. Some of the water is used for water flood enhanced oil recovery.

“One of the things we’re looking into is taking injection well water from gas production and using it for nearby oil drilling.”

Researcher Robert Balch from the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology described their development of a stand-alone water reuse/processing system. “We made a system that could be operated at a well head for a single well or for a place where you don’t have much produced water to deal with and want to avoid the expense of trucking.”

The project’s concept was designed for a low-temperature (140-160 degree F) operation without using pressurization or membranes to clean the water. “Some of the water coming out of wells in the west can range from 150 degrees in the Permian Basin to about 180 degrees (at the separator) in Wyoming.”

“We refer to our process as ‘rain in a box’. You drip in geothermally heated water into a chamber use a fan to blow ambient air up through a chamber, and drops it to the next chamber where water drops out─similar to rain. This device works best in low-humidity environments such as the Rocky Mountain states or the desert southwest.”

According to Balch, the primary system operational cost is in running the fans and blowers and any secondary cooling. The unit is housed on a trailer that can be hauled by a pickup truck.

The unit’s output yielded about 20% fresh water for every pass through the system with about 80% brine. “Even with higher amounts of total dissolved solids, it did not affect the fresh water yield. Depending on the unit configuration, operational costs range from 12 cents up to about 31 cents per barrel of water and can produce about 7-10 barrels of fresh water per day.”