by: Jennifer Rook
Water is a most precious commodity everywhere but when you live, work and drill in the high mountain desert of the second driest state in the United States, water is oftentimes deemed THE most important factor in life. Here in the Uinta Basin life, livelihoods and industry all depend upon the availability of water. One can hardly ignore the constant plundering of water supplies in fairly dry region filled with irrigation and water diversion projects, as well as the many drilling rigs and well pads that dot the landscape. One company, however, has the determination and innovation it takes to balance the environmental drains of drilling with conservation. Thanks to the willingness of some local completion experts, Anadarko has become a champion of conservation in the gas and oil fields of Eastern Utah and is saving a lot of water and money in the process.
The Anadarko Completion Transfer System, or ACTS, is described as an effort to manage completion water more effectively on well pads as well as eliminate the need for additional surface space and truck traffic. ACTS also improves air quality through reduced road dust and traffic emissions. Basically, ACTS cuts down on water usage during the completion process by recycling water. In turn, the more water that is recycled, the less need there is for water trucks to haul off used water and less need for fresh water to be trucked onto pad locations. ACTS has not only earned Anadarko a 2010 Earth Day Award and the Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission's Chairman's Stewardship Award, it also saved the company $11 million in its first year.
It's also saving a whole lot of water in the Uinta Basin. According to Anadarko, fresh water consumption on Anadarko well pads was cut by 70% under the ACTS program.* That's 1.6 million barrels of fresh water saved in 2009. Water trucks are a necessity in the oil and gas industry and Jeff Samuels, completion expert with Anadarko, says there will never be a time when water trucks aren't needed in the oil and gas industry, but ACTS has significantly reduced the need for so many trucks and water. Water truck traffic was reduced by 85%, and fluid truck traffic has been cut by 50%*.
Once a well is drilled and cased, completion rigs are moved onsite. Completion is the process in which the well is enabled to produce oil or gas. The ACTS process is quite simple; water is needed to "frac", or fracture, rock during the process. Fresh water is trucked onsite and pumped into numerous wells when fracking begins and will eventually come back out of the hole, but that water will no longer be fresh. Using the ACTS process, the spent water is transferred from the hole to a pit or storage tank near the well site. It is then filtered, cleaned and reused instead of immediately hauled off and drained into a disposal pit. Several large pumps move the water back and forth from well to treatment, to frac storage tanks and pits, and back down-hole again.
Samuels says it would not be possible for Anadarko to frac at the rate it is now without this process. "This has been a neat project for Anadarko and it's saved a ton of money and water." says Samuels. "There is probably no way they'd let us frac at this rate if we were using straight fresh water. We'd have probably dried up every water well in Ouray had we kept on at this rate. Looking toward the future, I can see the agencies really pushing this process on everyone to save water."
Samuels says it was a tough sell to the agencies that govern the land at first, but once they saw the benefits of recycled water and realized that Anadarko was dedicated to making the process work, they were all on-board. Samuels says that now, when a permit is submitted to drill, a permit to recycle water is also approved at the same time. "Anadarko has spent a ton of money on this and has put a ton of effort into it to make it work. They've just done a great job with it to make it successful." Anadarko General Manager Brad Miller said, "We continue to stress the importance of innovative water-management solutions across all of our operations. The ACTS in our Greater Natural Buttes area is a great example of our ongoing commitment to work with our stakeholders to design and implement environmentally sound solutions that conserve water, reduce truck traffic and improve air quality."*
Anadarko and its employees in the Uinta Basin continue to look for ways to lessen impact on and give back to the land they are fortunate enough to be able to extract gas and oil from. Conservation is key to the company's philosophy and the importance of balancing both economic and environmental concerns is a commitment the company takes seriously. And when you're talking water issues in the West, conservation is a pretty safe approach, beneficial to all.
* stated in a Press Release from 11/19/2010
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