Local concerns about underground injection of oil & gas wastewater well-received
Last week, over 500 people involved with the fast-growing oil & gas wastewater treatment industry met for the Produced Water Society’s 36th Annual Conference in Sugar Land, TX. Over three days, attendees discussed technical/scientific & policy developments in international context. In Texas, where produced water volumes are exploding while drinking water shortages pose existential threats, the challenge to turn ‘waste into a resource’ is urgent.
Two Louisiana-based companies manned booths. “Technology is not the problem,” said Ed Godeaux of Produced Water Solutions of Broussard, which operates in 21 countries. “We can clean produced water to better than bottled water standards.” Having attended the conference for decades, Godeaux sees dramatically increasing business opportunity in evaporation/distillation, desalinization, reverse osmosis, & industrial use/recycling of produced water for cement, cooling water for data centers, etc. Enviro-Tech Systems of Covington displayed its filtration technology, and also offers a wide range of services.
USDOE emphasized it’s “here to help” with produced water, “one of the defining infrastructure challenges of the next decade for this country.” The Texas & New Mexico Produced Water Consortiums run a “State Coordinating Committee” — researching projects to minimize underground injection & promote beneficial uses for ‘Purified Produced Water’ (tap water equivalent). Agricultural representatives said USEPA & their industries are very open to using the treated wastewater, initially to restore rangeland & irrigate non-edible crops like cotton. Mineral extraction is a hot topic (magnesium, lithium, manganese, copper, bromine, iodine). The Texas Railroad Commission said the entire oil & gas industry recognizes the need for injection alternatives and has shared seismic data to cooperate on new Texas standards.
All the discussions aligned well with the concerns of the Jamestown (Bienville Parish) citizens who last month filed suit to appeal a Class 2 (Exploration & Production Wastewater) Injection permit granted by Louisiana’s Dept. of Conservation — to allow Brickyard Trucking, LLC to drill 3 commercial wells through sole source drinking water aquifers, to pump the toxic/radioactive wastewater under high pressure deeper underground (www.ShiftTheSubsidy.org).
The Louisiana Environmental Action Network (LEAN) and 4 citizens (Ralph Woodall, Tanya Griffith, Lois Smith, & Audrey Evans) cited substantive & procedural errors by the LA Dept. of Conservation in the appeal. Audrey Evans attended the PWS conference, along with Kim Voorhies Goodell of Lafayette, a longtime Louisiana water advocate. They met various allies in the effort to reduce ‘seismicity’ – including Berger Geoscience of Houston, which is promoting the confidential sharing of industry seismic data to allow Artificial Intelligence to monitor &
facilitate an overall reduction of geologic pressure wherever injection problems are predicted. Dr. Katie Smye of the Bureau of Economic Geology at UT said “The 2-mile Area of Review for permitting may not pick up potential issues” – underscoring local residents’ concerns about the major fault believed to be about 3 miles from the Brickyard injection site. She urged “collective management of the reservoir as a resource” for best results, and said “the deeper we go, the less we know.”
NW Louisiana residents seek to reduce: the mounting incidence of ‘man-made’ earthquakes, the proliferation of commercial injection facilities, the risk of contamination of drinking water, & the associated trucking hazards. They are demanding a Cumulative Environmental Impact Study of the effects of injection & better consideration of alternative disposal methods, particularly as operations in the Haynesville Shale are projected to double.