Estimating national water use associated with unconventional oil and gas development

Abstract

The U.S. Geological Survey's (USGS) Water Availability and Use Science Program (WAUSP) goals are to provide a more accurate assessment of the status of the water resources of the United States and assist in the determination of the quantity and quality of water that is available for beneficial uses. These assessments would identify long-term trends or changes in water availability since the 1950s in the United States and help to develop the basis for an improved ability to forecast water availability for future economic, energy-production, and environmental uses. The National Water Census (http://water.usgs.gov/ watercensus/), a research program of the WAUSP, supports studies to develop new water accounting tools and assess water availability at the regional and national scales. Studies supported by this program target focus areas with identified water availability concerns and topical science themes related to the use of water within a specific type of environmental setting. The topical study described in this fact sheet will focus on understanding the relation between production of unconventional oil and gas (UOG) for energy and the water needed to produce and sustain this type of energy development. This relation applies to the life-cycle of renewable and nonrenewable forms of UOG energy and includes extraction, production, refinement, delivery, and disposal of waste byproducts. Water-use data and models derived from this topical study will be applied to other similar oil and gas plays within the United States to help resource managers assess and account for water used or needed in these areas. Additionally, the results from this topical study will be used to further refine the methods used in compiling water-use data for selected categories (for example, mining, domestic self-supplied, public supply, and wastewater) in the USGS's 5-year national water-use estimates reports (http://water.usgs.gov/watuse/). Water Use and Unconventional Oil and Gas Development Temporary crew camps, such as this one near Medora, North Dakota, represent just one of many indirect uses of water that increase in areas of unconventional oil and gas development. Photograph by Joanna Thamke (U.S. Geological Survey). Water depots, such as this one near Watford, North Dakota, use freshwater from groundwater and surface water to fill water trucks to supply water for unconventional oil and gas development.

Impacts of Bakken Shale Oil Development on Regional Water Uses and Supply

“…Besides hydraulic fracturing, shale oil development in the Bakken also uses water for other processes such as well drilling, cementing, brine dilution (or maintenance water), etc. (Wanek, 2007;Haines, 2015;Carter et al, 2016). However, it is almost impossible to provide an accurate estimate of the amount of water used in these processes (Nicot and Scanlon, 2012;Scanlon et al, 2014a, b;Horner et al, 2016).…”

“…In the four-county core area, the reason for the increased industrial water use was obvious, while the increases in rural and municipal water use were primarily caused by a large number of temporary oilfield service workers migrating to the region during the oil boom (Carter et al, 2016;Horner et al, 2016;Scanlon et al, 2016). Our data analysis shows that, in the four-county core area, the combined municipal and rural water use added 1.88 Mm 3 (496 MG) water consumption per year, which is equivalent to 14.1% of the annual average water depot water use (13.3 Mm 3 or 3,526 MG) during 2008-2014 (Table S6).…”

“…The Bakken and Three Forks Formations in the Williston Basin Province of Montana, North Dakota, and South Dakota, the largest known unconventional oil reserves in the U.S. (Gaswirth et al ., ; Gaswirth and Marra, ), are located in a semiarid region (Carter et al ., ). In western North Dakota, the first Bakken horizontal well was drilled in 2004 and, since 2008, the so‐called “Bakken crude” started to dominate oil production from other plays in North Dakota as shown in Figure .…”

“…Expansion of the oil industry in the region has led to tremendous increases in the demand for water in addition to other natural, physical, social, and economic resources (Cwiak et al, 2015), but its impact on local water resources remains poorly understood (Carter et al, 2016;Horner et al, 2016). Compared with other major shale plays in the U.S., including the Barnett and Eagle Ford Shales in Texas (Nicot and Scanlon, 2012;Nicot et al, 2014;Scanlon et al, 2014a, b) and the Marcellus Shale in Pennsylvania (Rahm and Riha, 2012;Laurenzi and Jersey, 2013;Mitchell et al, 2013;Jiang et al, 2014), published research on water resources impacts caused by the Bakken shale oil development is relatively rare with a few recent exceptions.…”