Water Needs of the Shale Gas Industry in Texas

The Barnett Shale gas play, located in North Texas, has seen a relatively quick growth in the past decade with the development of new “frac” technologies needed to create pathways to produce gas from the very low permeability shales. More plays such as the Haynesville, Woodford, and Pearsall-Eagle Ford are coming online at an even steeper rate than the Barnett did. A typical horizontal well completion consumes over 3 millions gallons of fresh water in a very short time. There are currently over 13,000 completed shale gas wells in the State of Texas and many more will be drilled in the next decades. If total water use is relatively easy to collect and analyze, knowledge of the ground water – surface water split requires more effort and can only be estimated at >50% ground water in Texas. In the presentation, (1) we discuss a recent analysis of the future water consumption by the Texas gas industry (that includes recycling and frac efficiency), and (2) we introduce a range of opportunities that the gas industry could pursue to alleviate reliance on ground water.