How much water does fracking use, Part V

In Part I, Part II, Part III, and Part IV of this series, we showed that each hydraulic fractured well permanently poisons millions of gallons of water.

Now that Occidental is fracking the wells at Mae J and Papa Jo / Shumaker, there’s a renewed interest in the amount of water used by hydraulic fracturing, so let’s take a look at the 12 wells drilled at the Cosslett pad by Crestone Peak Resources.

By using more water than any other pad we’ve examined in this series, it’s once again worth saying out loud:

Crestone Peak Resources has used one hundred seventy-five million, five hundred thirty-four thousand, six hundred and seventy-four gallons of water to frack the twelve wells at Cosslett.

A total of 175,534,674 gallons of water, with a median of 16,252,811 gallons per well. It sounds like we’ll expect Occidental to use a similar quantity of water to drill the 12 wells at Mae J.

See also:

One Reply to “How much water does fracking use, Part V”

  1. This is a very worthy topic to pursue; but stating facts in big numbers does not have the impact that visualizing the data using creative use of graphics. The more that can be developed, and the amount of water that Colorado is losing water — permanently — to this dangerous industry, as compared to how much water is employed in other more productive uses — for human consumption, for farming, for other industries — could be quite informative, and potentially politically useful. I would be willing to help in this effort.

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