Sustainable Management of Produced Water From the Emerging CBM Industry In Queensland, Australia

Santos and its partners Petronas and Total, are developing a Coal Bed Methane to Liquid Natural Gas project in Queensland, Australia. Over the next 4 years, Santos will commence the development of a CBM wellfiled comprising around 2600 wells, producing up to 600 million standard cubic feet of gas per day.  The LNG plant, located at the coast of Queensland, 430 km away from the wellfield will liquify around 3 million tonnes of LNG per year for export overseas by LNG tanker ships. The CSG wellfield is spread over a north-south distance of over 200 km (125 miles) and at peak prpduction will produce up to 60 million l/day (15 million US gallons/day). The Santos project is however, only one of four such projects proposed for this area.

Australia is a nation dependent on coal fired power for baseload.  In a water short nation, but with one of the highest per-capita uses of water in the world, the use of coal-fired power into the future will not only contribute to global warming but also to the shortage of water available to communities for more sustainable industries. Santos is developing its CBM resources while at the same time providing water to the local community and the environment that would otherwise be unavailable to either. In this paper, we present our portfolio of CBM water management options and the results of estimates of the water per MW-hour consumed by the CBM industry under our practices, compared to that consumed by coal-fired power generation.  When compared to coal-fired power, the energy-water tradeoffs from CBM power generation are not only superior to coal, but creating local opportunities for sustainable industry and agriculture.