Category: Water Usage

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Extreme Reach Wellbores Require Extreme Water Use

Or, the march to the first billion gallon frac pad in Colorado

To understand the massive quantities of water that may be consumed to hydraulically fracture the 26 extreme reach wellbores at Draco, let’s look at the water used by the 394 hydraulic fracturing treatments logged thus far in 2024 to FracFocus, courtesy of the data wizards at Open FF who have made extensive inroads to sanitize and extend the FracFocus data.

Actual Water Use is Twice Estimated for Extreme Reach Wellbores

A detail view of the main graph below showing the hydraulic fracturing treatments at the Blue and Sky Ranch pads in Adams and Arapahoe Counties, respectively. The median wellbore length for these data is 5.43 miles, with a median 44.79 MM gallons of water consumed.

Let’s start with the upper extremes, as shown in the graph above. From the Cumulative Impacts analysis for the Blue Pad in Adams County, Crestone estimated they would consume between 102.9 and 147 million gallons of water to frac the 7 wells at Blue.

Crestone Peak Resources used a median of 47.7 million gallons of water per well and permanently poisoned 304 million gallons of water, more than twice their upper estimate!

Continue reading “Extreme Reach Wellbores Require Extreme Water Use”

Weld County Hydraulic Fracturing Water Use Map

This maps shows the volume of water in millions of gallons used to hydraulically fracture the wells at locations in Weld County.

This map depicts the total amount of water used to hydraulically fracture the wells at oil & gas locations across Weld County, Colorado. While the American Petroleum Institute (API) says “the average fracking job uses roughly 4 million gallons of water per well,” recent proposed projects such as the Draco Oil & Gas Development Plan (OGDP) in Erie estimate they’ll use over 20 million gallons to frac each of the 26 well bores at the Draco pad.

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Draco OGDP Cumulative Impacts Analysis

Now that the Draco OGDP application has been deemed complete by the ECMC, the documents submitted with the application are available to view/download. Here, we’re taking an opportunity to analyze the submitted Form 2B Cumulative Impacts Data Identification Form and share some new information.

  • Extraction plans to spend 9 weeks constructing the location, 18 weeks to drill the wells, and 23 weeks to complete the wells for Draco, for a total of 50 weeks of pre-production activities, assuming two concurrent electric drilling rigs will be used. The wells will be in production for 20 years.
  • The operator estimates 158,125 diesel vehicle miles will be driven before the wells are put into production to deliver sand, pipe, and other materials to the site.
  • The project will use 3.27 million pounds of proppant/sand during completions activities.
  • They plan to use 12,885,000 barrels of water to frack the 26 wells at Draco, for a total of 541 million gallons of water and an average of 20.8 million gallons per well.
  • They will not be recycling produced water because “the infrastructure necessary to reuse or recycle water does not exist in this area.”
  • Extraction plans to plug and abandon 22 wells at 18 locations, as well as removing 24 oil tanks and 13 produced water tanks.
Continue reading “Draco OGDP Cumulative Impacts Analysis”
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How much is 10 million gallons of water?

We’ve seen that modern hydraulic fracturing permanently poisons over 10 million gallons of water per well drilled — it’s a staggeringly large number that is hard to grasp. Here are some comparisons to give you a better idea of “how much” is in 10 million gallons of water.

500 standard swimming pools.
A standard swimming pool holds around 20,000 gallons of water.

6,250,000 toilet flushes.
A typical toilet flush uses 1.6 gallons of water.

138 Colorado homes’ use of water for an entire year.
The EPA estimates each American uses 82 gallons of water a day at home, for a total of 29,200 gallons per year. The average Colorado household size is 2.6 people per family.

9.64 square miles of lawn covered with 1″ of water.
You could cover 6,171 acres, or 9.64 square miles of lawn with 1 inch of water.

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Water usage for Hydraulic Fracturing in Broomfield, Colorado

This visualization shows the amount of water used to frac each of the wells drilled within the municipal boundaries of Broomfield, Colorado since 2017. The data is grouped by operator, with the most recently fracked wells shown first. In total, 848.76 million gallons of water have been used to frac these wells, with a median of 12.57 million gallons of water used to frac each of the 67 wells.

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Water Usage for Hydraulic Fracturing in Erie, Colorado

This visualization shows the amount of water used to frac each of the wells drilled within the municipal boundaries of Erie, Colorado since 2017. The data is grouped by operator, with the most recently fracked wells shown first. In total, 626.48 million gallons of water have been used to frac these wells, with a median of 9.64 million gallons of water used to frac each of the 57 wells.

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How much water does fracking use, Part VI

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

Once again, the Erie community is under assault with the 26-well proposed Draco pad and an additional 18 wells proposed to be drilled at the Coyote Trails pad. Let’s look at the data for the Cosslett East wells, completed in September 2023.

All data obtained from https://www.fracfocus.org/wells

A total of 178,725,812 gallons of water were used to drill these wells, with a median of 13,261,197 gallons per well. This is 18.4% less than the median water use for the original Cosslett wells, but without completion information for these wells (the data is not yet available at the ECMC), it’s not obvious why. For reference, here is a visual representation of the two sets of directional wellbores:

A comparison of the directional wellbores for Cosslett (left) and Cosslett East (right).

Once the completion data for the Cosslett East wells becomes available, we’ll update this analysis.

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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.

All data obtained from https://www.fracfocus.org/wells

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.

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How much water does fracking use, Part IV

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

Now that the data for the drilling at Broomfield’s Interchange B pad has become available from FracFocus, a quick calculation shows Extraction Oil & Gas has used 81,837,881 gallons of water to frack the 10 wells at the Interchange B pad.

Once again, let’s say it out loud:

Extraction Oil & Gas has used eighty-one million, eight hundred thirty-seven thousand, eight hundred eighty-one gallons of water to frack the ten wells at Interchange B.

Extrapolating to the remaining 74 wells to be drilled, we’re expecting Extraction to use just over 600 million gallons of water on this project. Note the difference between the water used for the C wells in the Codell formation versus the N wells in the Niobrara formation.

We’ll keep you posted of the water usage as Extraction progresses with their comprehensive drilling plan.

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How much water does fracking use, Part III

In Part I and Part II, we showed that each hydraulic fractured well permanently poisons millions of gallons of water. This week a new Duke University study was released, claiming “the amount of water used per well for hydraulic fracturing surged by up to 770 percent between 2011 and 2016 in all major U.S. shale gas and oil production regions.”

Since it has been a while since we’ve gathered this data from FracFocus, a quick calculation shows Extraction Oil & Gas has used 102,044,434 gallons of water to frack the 10 wells at the Coyote Trails pad just east of Erie, Colorado in unincorporated Weld County.

Extraction Oil & Gas used 102,044,434 gallons of water to frack the 10 wells at Coyote Trails.

Once again, let’s say it out loud:

Extraction Oil & Gas has used one hundred two million, forty-four thousand, four hundred and thirty four gallons of water to frack the ten wells at Coyote Trails.

Keep in mind that these 10 wells are just the beginning; 4 Form 2s have already been approved and another 24 are pending for this location.

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