Integrating oil and gas wastewaters into Food-Energy-Water (FEW) models

In regions of high water-stress, the water co-produced with oil and gas during hydrocarbon extraction ("produced waters") could be reused for certain industrial purposes, reserving available fresh water for food production or other essential uses. The potential uses for produced waters, however, are highly dependent on their chemistry. For example, many produced waters have extremely saline compositions, up to 10× more concentrated than seawater, and high Ba concentrations. This impacts whether they can be economically desalinated or used for industrial cooling without causing corrosion or scaling within pipes. Additionally, the prevalence of naturally occurring radioactive materials (NORM) such as radium present environmental and health hazards. There has been significant ongoing research on produced water chemistry, yet little effort combining these data with production volume data so that produced waters can be incorporated into Food-Energy-Water (FEW) or water-stress geospatial models on a large scale. In this study, we combine geochemical data from the U.S. Geological Survey Produced Waters Geochemical Database and other sources with water volume production data from multiple U.S. petroleum producing basins to generate national GIS layers that can be incorporated into FEW models. We have created new variables, such as a salinity-normalized volume "volinity", which maps not just how much produced water exists, but what fraction of that might be usable for different purposes. Our results show that produced water exists in multiple basins that is available for industrial reuse. Using these maps, we can better plan for produced water reuse and reduce water stress.