Strontium isotope detection of brine contamination in the East Poplar oil field, Montana

Abstract

Background  Brine contamination was documented in the East Poplar oil field as early as the mid-1980s by the U.S.

Risk assessment of brine contamination to aquatic resources from energy development in glacial drift deposits: Williston Basin, USA

“…A large portion of the Prairie Pothole Region (PPR), an area containing millions of wetlands that provide critical habitat for the majority of North American migratory waterfowl (Batt et al, 1989), is located within these glacial deposits. Previous reports have documented brine contamination to aquatic resources (surface water and shallow groundwater) within the PPR and other glacial deposits that mantle the Williston Basin (Beal et al, 1987;Murphy, 1983;Murphy and Kehew, 1984;Murphy et al, 1988;Reiten and Tischmak, 1993;Thamke and Craigg, 1997;Peterman et al, 2010Peterman et al, , 2012Preston, 2011;Rouse et al, 2013;Preston et al, 2014aPreston et al, , 2014b. Much of the documented contamination is associated with older oilfield practices; however, spills of oil and brine continue to occur regularly.…”

Strontium isotope systematics of mixing groundwater and oil-field brine at Goose Lake in northeastern Montana, USA

“…The 87 Sr/ 86 Sr ratio of PW1 is similar to Sr isotope values for produced water from the Weyburn field in southern Saskatchewan (Quattrocchi et al, 2006) and to brines that affected groundwater in the Ft. Peck Indian Reservation in eastern Montana (Peterman et al, 2012). All of these brines were produced from the Mississippian Madison Group carbonate rocks.…”

Geochemical fingerprinting of hydraulic fracturing fluids from Qusaiba Hot Shale and formation water from Paleozoic petroleum systems, Saudi Arabia

“…), brine contamination in the Popular oil field, Montana (Peterman et al . ), and production‐related mobilization of multi‐aquifer systems in conventional carbonate reservoirs, Gulf of Mexico (Birkle et al . , ).…”

“…Standard geochemical fingerprinting techniques for produced water in the oil industry were historically based upon the correlation and visualization of major ion concentrations and ratios, such as the Stiff plot (Stiff 1951) or Piper diagram (Piper 1944). Since the late 1990s, novel applications of multi-isotopic techniques were developed to fingerprint formation water in hydrocarbon exploration and production operations, such as for the stray-fluid migration associated with unconventional hydrocarbon production in the Midale area, Saskatchewan, Canada (Rostron & Holmden 2000), fluid migration on a basinalscale in the Northern Appalachian , brine contamination in the Popular oil field, Montana (Peterman et al 2010), and production-related mobilization of multi-aquifer systems in conventional carbonate reservoirs, Gulf of Mexico (Birkle et al 2002(Birkle et al , 2009. A representative recompilation of formation water-related studies and applied technologies in petroleum reservoirs is given in Kharaka & Hanor (2014).…”