From the Northern Colorado Business Report (Steve Porter):
It’s estimated that 90 percent of the liquid brought up through drilling is ‘produced’ water while only 10 percent is oil. Until recently, that produced water has been seen as a waste product and a liability to oil and gas drilling companies, with some of the vast quantities simply reinjected back into the ground in geologically sealed wells. But there’s a company that’s aiming to take that waste product and turn it into a valuable commodity.
Produced Water Development LLC is a spinoff company of Fort Collins-based Stewart Environmental. The company is partnering with Houston-based Energy Water Solutions to marry SE’s filtering technology with EWS’ sales and marketing to create a new water resource in the always-thirsty West…
The water used for fracking must be fresh, cleaned of the inorganic salts, hydrocarbons, solids, metals, dissolved gases, bacteria and other living organisms found in produced water. Oil and gas companies can have their own produced water cleaned with the devices patented by Produced Water Development and reuse it for their fracking operations. But even if there’s too much water to reuse for their own purposes, the produced water can be sold and recycled for agricultural, industrial, even municipal drinking uses…
“Every drop of water in Colorado is spoken for,” [Dave Stewart, founder of Stewart Environmental and Produced Water Development LLC] said. “This is the only new resource for water now, and the last thing we should do is pump it down a well.” Stewart said the recently patented technology can clean produced water to the point that it can be consumed by animals and humans. “We can actually take (all contaminants) out,” he said. “We can discharge to a cold-water fishery and not have an issue.”[…]
Under Produced Water’s business plan, oil and gas companies would lease a filtering plant from the company. The date of the installation of the first filtering device into the field has not yet been confirmed, said Shasha, who notes that oil and gas companies still have a learning curve before they start lining up to use the new technology.