Greening the Desert While Helping Business and Caring for the Environment

Abstract

This paper describes the utilization of produced and treated formation water for planting trees and growing algae in large ponds; in a massive scale in South Oman. A detailed study has been carried out to assess the injection requirements for pressure maintenance in the producing reservoir and using the remaining excess pot-treated water for farming of the palm trees. The produced water has been used as disposal in formations deeper than the producing horizons in the past. The produced water was separated in a processing station that received gross production from a number of fields in South Oman. This water was disposed in the aquifer underlying a producing reservoir that has experienced pressure maintenance due to this disposal. The impact of this excess water disposal on the aquifer was studied to evaluate the risk of breaching cap rock integrity. The risk was not significant but to ensure "no damage to the environment and people" it was decided to reduce or optimize injection rates to maintain the reservoir pressure safeguarding reserves. In addition, the disposal of the water required significant amount of power equivalent to emitting significant amount of CO2 annually just for water disposal. The study was carried out using simple material balance methods to predict the pressure behaviour given an injection profile. The recommendations from the study have already been implemented to convert the deep-water disposal to injection in the aquifer. This has been achieved by the integration of number of interfaces from sub-surface to field operations. All the pieces are in place to take it the next level of execution that is to treat the water at surface for oil removal, hence rendering the water at acceptable quality levels for tree plantation and algae ponds. The project also aims in a future second phase to further treat the water to higher specifications allowing the use of it for agricultural purposes. This would introduce a commercial farm that will depend on this source of water. This would be a novel concept in South Oman where the treated water will be used for farming solving multiple issues at multiple levels namely helping the business achieve its objective of sustained oil production, helping local communities with employment via farming and helping the organization care for the environment by reducing carbon footprints.