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California's epic drought is pushing Big Oil to solve a problem it's struggled with for decades: what to do with the billions of gallons of wastewater that gush out of wells every year.
Golden State drillers have pumped much of that liquid back underground into disposal wells. Now, amid a four-year dry spell, more companies are looking to recycle their water or sell it to parched farms as the industry tries to get ahead of environmental lawsuits and new regulations.
The trend could have implications for oil patches across the country. With fracking boosting the industry's thirst for water, companies have run into conflicts from Texas to Colorado to Pennsylvania. California could be an incubator for conservation efforts that have so far failed to gain traction elsewhere in the U.S.
If you were thinking California's drought might accelerate desalinization technology, you're wrong. It's actually helping the oil and natural gas industries make more money.
Original Submission
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 12 2015, @04:06AM
> There are ways to treat it so it stops being salty,
The salt has to go somewhere.
> the more simple systems involve evaporation in the sun and then collecting the vapours.
So inefficient that it is not cost-effective compared to other options.
The hard truth is that the california growers need to (a) stop growing water inefficient crops like nuts - a single almond requires 1 gallon of water and a single walnut takes 5 gallons. And (b) start using irrigation techniques that are better than just dumping the water on the ground and letting most of it evaporate. They've had a good ride so far, but now the piper is calling.
If this fracking waste-water thing becomes well known those farmers are going lose everything anyway - forget GMOs, nobody wants even a chance that fracking chemicals end up in their food. We denigrate china for having such poorly enforced food safety standards, even a hint of that in the US will cause people to freak the fuck out.
(Score: 3, Funny) by khallow on Sunday July 12 2015, @06:10AM
The salt has to go somewhere.
It goes back into the ocean.
If this fracking waste-water thing becomes well known those farmers are going lose everything anyway - forget GMOs, nobody wants even a chance that fracking chemicals end up in their food. We denigrate china for having such poorly enforced food safety standards, even a hint of that in the US will cause people to freak the fuck out.
I grant that public hysteria might indeed destroy some amount of California agriculture, but what does that have to do with China? As to fracking chemicals getting into the food, let us remember that is the sinister intent with farmers pumping thousands of gallons of dihydrogen monoxide, the most common hazardous chemical used in fracking, onto their crops. This will no doubt get into the food and cause untold suffering.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by davester666 on Sunday July 12 2015, @06:29AM
exactly. the only thing in waste-water from fracking or oil drilling is "dihydrogen monoxide".
I'm sure every oil company CEO wouldn't have a problem with it being connected straight to their corporate headquarters and their homes and whatever company supplies their bottled water.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday July 12 2015, @01:26PM
exactly. the only thing in waste-water from fracking or oil drilling is "dihydrogen monoxide".
I'm sure every oil company CEO wouldn't have a problem with it being connected straight to their corporate headquarters and their homes and whatever company supplies their bottled water.
I'm sure that no one in the developed world drinks "waste water" no matter what process generated the waste water. And once you've treated it so it becomes potable, then what's the big deal?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 12 2015, @03:18PM
> And once you've treated it so it becomes potable, then what's the big deal?
How do you define "potable?" Are you so trusting as to believe that Chevron uses your definition and not something packed full of loopholes? Because corporations never cut corners in order to save themselves money. Right?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday July 12 2015, @04:38PM
(Score: 2) by davester666 on Sunday July 12 2015, @05:42PM
totally. so make sure some of the 'output' from this process goes to the homes and offices of the board of director's and top executives of these oil companies.
I will bet that NONE of them will drink the water, other than for a press shot.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 12 2015, @05:57PM
> I suppose we could regulate that just like most of the world regulates water used for agriculture and human consumption.
Regulations written on the basis of starting with water that's not hugely contaminated in the first place?
I don't think so.
A minimum first pass would be regulations that require a fully disclosed list of chemicals added to the water before it is injected and measurements of all of those concentrations on the other end of the decontamination process. But that wouldn't cover the by-products of interactions between those chemicals, nor any chemicals picked up in the drilling process from other sources that get mixed in, like the lubricants on the drill itself.
One thing is for sure, nothing like that is happening today. The drilling companies have fought tooth and nail to keep the list of their chemicals a secret for 'proprietary' reasons.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday July 13 2015, @12:24AM
Regulations written on the basis of starting with water that's not hugely contaminated in the first place?
Sounds reasonable to me.
The drilling companies have fought tooth and nail to keep the list of their chemicals a secret for 'proprietary' reasons.
Why the scare quotes? It's obvious that oil drilling is a highly competitive field and that what goes into those fracking chemicals is a competitive advantage. It's reasonable to ask that you understand why things are done before you pronounce judgment on them.
(Score: 2) by davester666 on Monday July 13 2015, @01:09AM
They get to keep it secret right up until the moment they try to sell it as water that enters the food system.
Then they have to disclose everything they have done to it.
Right now, the regulations are written for rain water, that has not had a lot of stuff added to it. They haven't been written expecting whatever mysterious compounds the oil companies have been using for drilling or fracking.
Or are you going for the 'free market' solution, where we just start doing it, and 20 years from now, there is a significant rise in cancer and leukemia on farms that use the water, and in people who drink the water, and people who consume the food, followed by 10-20 years of litigation where the oil companies deny it was due to their water, followed by the shell companies that actually 'sold' the water going bankrupt, so the oil companies are off the hook. Time for the gov't to step in and offer rebates on health care plans.
That's a great solution.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by khallow on Monday July 13 2015, @01:31AM
Right now, the regulations are written for rain water, that has not had a lot of stuff added to it. They haven't been written expecting whatever mysterious compounds the oil companies have been using for drilling or fracking.
Nonsense. If this loophole existed, then all manner of industrial plants would be exploiting it. You'd have farms in the middle of Houston, for example, for the express purpose of dumping waste water from many chemical plants in the area.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 13 2015, @03:38AM
From Wikipedia [wikipedia.org], with plenty of sources, including the law and amendments themselves, for your perusal:
The fluids used in fracking are completely unregulated and ignored by the law and legally aren't even considered contaminants.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday July 13 2015, @03:30PM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 13 2015, @03:41AM
"Why should I bother trying to come up with any kind of solution? Its not my problem." - every capitalist ever.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 12 2015, @03:27PM
The salt has to go somewhere.
It goes back into the ocean.
I think that sort "let them eat cake" response perfectly sums up just how ignorantly callow you are. Brine waste disposal is an enormous problem for desalination. You can't just dump concentrated salt back into the ocean - the local ecosystem depends on a narrow of range of salinity, increasing it like you so casually suggest is much like dumping excess nitrogen oxide into the air - look how great that worked out for humans.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday July 12 2015, @04:41PM
I think that sort "let them eat cake" response perfectly sums up just how ignorantly callow you are.
Or it could reflect my opinion that this is a minor engineering problem.
increasing it like you so casually suggest is much like dumping excess nitrogen oxide into the air - look how great that worked out for humans.
We got a lot of civilization for those excess nitrogen oxides. A little cost/benefit analysis would go a long ways here.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 12 2015, @05:47PM
I think that sort "let them eat cake" response perfectly sums up just how ignorantly callow you are.
Or it could reflect my opinion that this is a minor engineering problem.
Potato, potato.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday July 13 2015, @01:20AM
Potato, potato.
The thing is, which should I take seriously a viewpoint where diluting concentrated salt water in ocean is considered to be a hard problem?
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Sunday July 12 2015, @08:07PM
Did the prior comment really just point out how callow khallow is? Oh, the pun! Oh Mores! Oh the Humanity!
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday July 13 2015, @01:27AM
Did the prior comment really just point out how callow khallow is?
No. The problem here is diluting concentrated salt water in ocean. It's not a hard problem. It's never going to be a hard problem. If desalination is viable in the first place, then you can afford the slight overhead of mixing your discarded waste water with sea water.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Monday July 13 2015, @02:15AM
you can afford the slight overhead of mixing your discarded waste water with sea water.
Let me see if I have this straight: "Callow khallow is shallow about the brine-o?"
Sometimes it is just very difficult to have a non-serious conversation around here.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday July 13 2015, @03:32PM
Sometimes it is just very difficult to have a non-serious conversation around here.
Sure, but I can't that it's due to a failing on my end.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Joe Desertrat on Sunday July 12 2015, @07:26PM
let us remember that is the sinister intent with farmers pumping thousands of gallons of dihydrogen monoxide, the most common hazardous chemical used in fracking, onto their crops. This will no doubt get into the food and cause untold suffering.
Try doing a quick Google search. You'll find that chemicals such as benzene, chromium-6, lead, arsenic, radium and others contaminate the water in far higher concentrations than allowable limits. They don't just pump pure, fresh water into the ground. You should remember Dick Cheney fighting hard to prevent companies from being required to reveal their "proprietary" mixes of chemicals.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday July 13 2015, @01:39AM
You'll find that chemicals such as benzene, chromium-6, lead, arsenic, radium and others contaminate the water in far higher concentrations than allowable limits.
You assume that the waste water will have those contaminants in it. I see no indication that they're doing that. After all, if they dump highly contaminated waste water into an open air aqueduct, then that's going to be treated as a chemical spill by both California and the US EPA. Further, any crops contaminated will simply be unsellable. This is a problem that has already been solved.
(Score: 2) by Joe Desertrat on Monday July 13 2015, @05:38PM
This is a problem that has already been solved.
Maybe. But with lax enforcement, weak regulations, secrecy regarding chemicals used (you have to test for particular chemicals to find them), industry's tendency to avoid costs, etc. I do not hold high hopes for the process. Maybe if the cost for transgressions was significant enough, holding corporate officers personally responsible rather than allowing them to vanish in a puff of bankruptcy, this might fly, but we know that won't be the case.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday July 13 2015, @10:50PM
But with lax enforcement
Then fix the actual problem.
(Score: 2) by Joe Desertrat on Tuesday July 14 2015, @05:21PM
The problem is that too many people refuse to admit that a problem could exist until a disaster occurs as a result. It is of course too late at that point. If you are talking about food and water supplies, we should err on the side of caution and make anyone proposing potentially dangerous changes prove they will not cause harm. There is no fixing something like this if it goes wrong.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday July 14 2015, @08:57PM
f you are talking about food and water supplies, we should err on the side of caution and make anyone proposing potentially dangerous changes prove they will not cause harm.
Those "potentially dangerous changes" include applying the precautionary principle. When your processes are self-consistent, get back to me.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 13 2015, @08:27AM
Apparently these are much easier to separate from water than salt. (You do know that cr6+ is poisonous for plants?)
(Score: 1) by TheMessageNotTheMessenger on Sunday July 12 2015, @04:09PM
You can sell the salt. Harvesting salt from salt water is a thing. It usually involves using the sun to evaporate the water, the salt stays behind.
"Mediterranean Seasalt" is a thing I can get in my supermarket. Instead of a powder, this is sold in the form of large crystals in a grinder. It's really no different than any other salt, so it's a bit of a marketing thing.
Wouldn't surprise me if some of that "Mediterranean Seasalt" is actually regular mined salt. It sounds nicer like this. But it's just ye olde NaCl.
Hello! :D
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 13 2015, @01:07AM
So, you reckon selling the remaining salt - all of it - wouldn't cause any problems? It wouldn't, for example, depress the prices of salt, causing businesses to close? Employment would fall, too. You see no problem with that?
Because you think you've found a solution (ha!) to the problem doesn't mean you're not creating others.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 13 2015, @03:45AM
That's called "the market". Why would the market doing what it always does ever be a problem?