Suffice it to say that tight formation oil and gas flows toward the future on a sea of water.

As the main ingredient in hydraulic fracturing, water use per well is rising as operators extend laterals, add stages and increase proppant loading. Water consumption ranges from 300,000 barrels (bbl) per lateral in the southern Midland Basin to 500,000 bbl in the Delaware. There is active discussion of moving to 750,000 bbl of water on extended laterals.

What do all these numbers mean?

The Permian Basin needs an estimated 40 billion bbl of water over the next 25 years to fracture stimulate an estimated 60,000 horizontal wells. If using today’s water handling practices, this represents a $3.6 billion run rate, or $90 billion in spending over a quarter century.

The truth is, the Permian lacks the water resources to meet future demand. Consequently, the industry is looking to recycle flowback and produced water for reuse in fracture stimulation.

Produced water reuse is already underway in Pennsylvania, where disposal options are scarce, and in the Anadarko Basin, where water recycling infrastructure is in varying stages of development at Newfield Exploration Co., Devon Energy Corp., Continental Resources Inc. and Chesapeake Energy Corp.

As the industry enters harvest resource mode on tight formation plays, water infrastructure is rising to top of mind as a major logistical consideration. In full field development, water recycling has become a major component in strategic planning as operators deploy interconnected recycling, treatment and water storage facilities across a large geography.

The use of recycled produced water varies. In Texas, the Eagle Ford Shale generates small amounts of produced water and recycling is a minor factor. It’s different in the Permian, which features less fresh water for supply, but has larger volumes of flowback and produced water per well, much of which is highly saline.

To date, Permian water recycling proj­ects have been company-specific. Approach Resources Inc. constructed a flowback and produced water recycling facility in 2015 to service the company’s three-block Pangea project in the southern Midland Basin. Flow­back and produced water provided 100% of water for fracture stimulation across 123,000 net acres. The facility treated 2.2 million (MMbbl) of water in its first four months and generated cost savings of $7 million. Approach discovered recycled water improved Wolfcamp production on its acreage.

In the Delaware Basin, Matador Resources Co. operates two recycling facilities on opposite sides of the Texas-New Mexico state line. In Loving County, Texas, Matador used 5.1 MMbbl of recycled water to stimulate 407 stages across 13 wells over the last two years. Matador added an initial 5,000 barrels per day (bbl/d) in recycling capacity at its Rustler Breaks Tiger facility in Eddy County, N.M., in 2016 and cites $4.8 million in savings to date on 5.3 MMbbl of recycled water.

While recycled water is a major component of future water supply, several industry players are at work on sourcing.

Pioneer Natural Resources Co. will combine municipal wastewater and brackish sources into a regionally integrated water system servicing its Midland Basin acreage. Pioneer will take delivery on 391 MMbbl of Odessa, Texas, municipal wastewater over 11 years. The company has also agreed to underwrite $110 million in water system upgrades for the city of Midland, including a new sewage treatment plant, in exchange for the city’s municipal wastewater in the future. When finished, Pioneer’s system will move water for hydraulic fracturing from up to 150 double-lined storage ponds through 20 separate water subsystems when build out occurs in 2019.

Pioneer has locked up the available municipal effluent sources in the Permian. Other supply options include Wolfcamp Water Partners, which is proposing 400,000 bbl/d via a pipeline connecting non-potable deep Delaware Basin aquifers to oil and gas operators in the Midland Basin via a hydrostatic gravity-fed 160-mile pipeline.

The move from single-company proprietary solutions to regional infrastructure integration at scale is a logical next step—a midstream infrastructure for recycled water will keep oil and gas production moving forward using hydraulically fracture stimulated multiple laterals.

Water will flow uphill to money. In this case, flowback water creates arbitrage in favor of the industry that exceeds $63 billion in savings over the next quarter century using technologies available to the industry today.

As they say in southern Louisiana, there ain’t no way to stop the water.

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