Spatiotemporal Variability in Hydraulic Fracturing Water Use and Water Produced with Shale Gas in the U.S.

Longer time series and increasing data availability allows more comprehensive assessment of spatiotemporal variability in hydraulic fracturing (HF) water use and flowback/produced (FP) water generation in shale plays in the U.S. In this analysis we quantified HF and FP water volumes for seven major shale gas plays in the U.S. using detailed well by well analyses through 2015. Well count ranges from 1,500 (Utica) to 20,200 (Barnett) with total cumulative? HF water use ranging from 12 billion gallons (bgal) (Utica) to 65 bgal (Barnett). HF water use/well has been increasing over time in many plays and currently ranges from 4.5 mgal/well (Fayetteville) to 10 mgal/well (Utica) (2015). Normalizing by lateral length results in a range of 900 gal/ft (Fayetteville) to 15,600 gal/ft (Marcellus) (2015). FP water volumes are also highly variable, lowest in the Utica and highest in the Barnett. Management of FP water is mostly through disposal into Class II salt water injection wells, with the exception of the Marcellus where >90% of the FP water is reused/recycled. Along the dramatic domestic gas production increase, electricity generation from natural gas has almost doubled since 2000. It is important to consider the water use for HF in terms of the lifecycle of natural gas with HF water consumption. It is equivalent to <10% of the water consumed in natural gas-fired power plants that usually require less water than coal-fired power plants, resulting in net water savings.