Abstract
Hydrocarbon recovery from conventional and unconventional wells, such as those using hydraulic fracturing (HF), generates substantial volumes of highly saline wastewater, known as flowback and produced water (FPW). Traditional evaluations of FPW management have focused on volume and chemical additives in HF fluids, neglecting variations in FPW volumetric production and salinity. Here we introduce two parameters to better assess the environmental impact of FPW: total produced salts (TPS), which accounts for both volume and salinity, and produced salts intensity, the ratio of TPS to the energy content of recovered hydrocarbons. Analysing a database of over 620,000 HF and conventional wells in North America, we found that more than 355 billion tonnes of salts were produced from 2005 to 2019, with HF wells contributing over 85%. Projections indicate that more than 1.5 trillion tonnes of salts will be produced by wells drilled between 2019 and 2050, predominantly from HF wells. TPS and produced salts intensity are crucial for assessing environmental risks, treatment costs and resource extraction potential, providing valuable metrics for regulators and planners.
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Data availability
All the non-proprietary data used in this study can be found at https://dataverse.scholarsportal.info/privateurl.xhtml?token=632a445c-1c31-47e1-bbdb-132432d2e87f, which contains monthly production data for HF and conventional oil and gas wells in Canada. The production data for US wells are proprietary and can be obtained through https://www.enverus.com/.
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Acknowledgements
This research was supported by an NSERC Collaborative Research and Development grant (CRDPJ 469308–14) to D.S.A., G.G.G. and J.W.M., with further support from the Encana Corporation, and a SSHRC grant (435–2015–0502) to J.G. The authors acknowledge G. Cheruvelil for assistance in extraction of state-by-state production data.
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A.Z. and D.S.A. conceived and designed the study. All authors collaboratively collected and contributed to the data analysis and interpretation. A.Z. wrote the initial draft of the manuscript. All authors reviewed and approved the final manuscript, contributed to revisions and provided critical feedback throughout the study.
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Supplementary Appendices A–G, containing Supplementary Figs. A1, B1, C1, C2, D1, D2, E1, E2, F1, G1 and G2, Tables F1 and G, and discussion.
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Sampled subset of 1,500 wells to demonstrate data handling and calculations.
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Zolfaghari, A., Gehman, J., Kondash, A.J. et al. Wastewater production footprint of conventional and unconventional oil and gas wells in North America. Nat Water 2, 749–757 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44221-024-00286-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s44221-024-00286-7
