As water demand keeps rising and viable supplies dry out, creative approaches are required to make smarter use, and reuse, of existing water. This is the mission of the new Center for Materials for Water and Energy SysTems (M-WET), a multi-university research center headquartered in The University of Texas at Austin’s Cockrell School of Engineering.Read more
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Promising chemistry from PureLine and Flotek appears to help manage disposal well plugging and fouling.* The companies claim the combination of Hydrochloric Acid, Chlorine Dioxide, and a proprietary Complex Nanofluid provides a 1-2-3 punch that addresses the more difficult bad actors. While acids and solvents do a decent job of clearing some blockages, the combinationRead more
The rebound in oil prices has spurred a dramatic upswing in drilling activity in many parts of the country—and New Mexico is no exception. According to the US Energy Information Administration (EIA), New Mexico’s side of the Permian basin is currently home to about 30,000 wells, with more wells being drilled every day. The practiceRead more
In Kingfisher County, the heart of Oklahoma’s oil patch, the summer of 2018 has seen concerns about produced water handling turn into a heated fight between state regulators and oil and gas companies. The heart of the conflict centers on the use of water in temporary piping (most typically, flexible lay-flat hoses) that are placedRead more
EnergyMakers is now in the Salt Water Disposal and Underground Injection Data-on-Demand business! If you are hungry to understand the big picture but frustrated with the lack of minable data, this offering is for you. EnergyMakers has expanded its consulting and analytic offerings to include comprehensive and current SWD data for leading basins, including bothRead more
When earthquakes are discussed on the news, reporters always state the location of the quake’s epicenter with such certainty. But in fact, there is a large margin of error associated with earthquake locations derived from then-available seismic monitoring systems. As EnergyMakers Advisory Group’s Laura Capper writes in her recent article in Shale Play WaterRead more
In the latest issue of Shale Play Water Management Magazine, EnergyMakers AG CEO Laura Capper reviews the necessary role of Underground Injection Control (UIC) wells for oil and gas production—and the capacity concerns that are emerging as a very real issue. As rig counts and production rates rise in prolific oil and gas regions like theRead more
Check out the great summary article, Maintaining Injectivity of Disposal Wells: From Water Quality to Formation Permeability, in the JPT – which dives into injectivity issues for Disposal Wells. Poor water quality characteristics in injectate can jeopardize injectivity in even high-quality formations by rapidly decreasing permeability. The Saudi Aramco authors of this paper offer general guidelinesRead more
It seems as if seismologists are drowning in data amidst an ocean of seismic noise. Now, researchers at Harvard, MIT, and Virginia’s Gram Labs are leveraging advances in artificial intelligence (AI) to quiet down the noise and help detect and more accurately locate induced earthquakes. Their new technology offering known as ConvNetQuake is a neural network specifically designed to detectRead more
EnergyMakers AG’s Underground Injection and Seismicity Operational Risk Report does a deep dive into induced seismicity—and how fluid injection from oilfield activities and wastewater disposal activities might induce felt earthquakes in certain geologic conditions. According to Myths and Facts by J.L. Rubinstein (USGS) and A.B. Mahani (Geological Survey of Canada), there are four major ways thatRead more