Company says oilfield water cleaning test a success

Oilfield byproduct water is now a resource instead of a waste, and that new resource may improve the livelihoods of farmers and ranchers. Encore Green and the Beneficial-Use Water Alliance on Monday watered local rancher Owen Goertz’s grazing grass with cleaned byproduct water from the hydraulic fracturing process. Jeff Holder, director of the Beneficial-Use Water Alliance, said Marvin Nash, founder of Encore Green, used existing technology to develop a new method to clean the byproduct water. He said byproduct, or “produced,” water contains some oil, as well as sand and other elements that make it unsuitable for use. “I think the (statistic) is: 71 billion gallons of water was essentially thrown away (in 2017) in the state of Wyoming,” Holder said. He said the oil companies generally have gallons of water to dispose of every day, while ranchers and farmers are desperate for water. So, if the water can be cleaned and made usable by the nearby ranchers and farmers, both parties win. Nash’s idea, which they now are implementing, is to use the same money that oil companies would spend disposing of the water to clean it instead. Holder likened the process to recycling trash instead of just taking it to the dump...MORE