American Oil and Gas Reporter - July 2015 - 162

bers to get more involved in talking up
the oil and gas industry.
"You are the greatest pipeline to get
this information out. We have the tools
in place. Now we have the messaging arsenal in place," he said. "With our young
millennials in this industry-particularly
those just coming out of college-we have
the pieces for them to disseminate this
through their networks."
He pointed out one of the surprising results was how many in the focus groups
were familiar with OERB and its programs.

Jason Ren, director of the Bioenergy
and Bioscience Recovery Laboratory in
Environmental Engineering at the University of Colorado, describes a new
technology developed in his laboratory
that has the potential to alleviate the
wastewater disposal problem. He told
the Oklahoma Independent Petroleum
Association his treatment process removed salts and organic contaminants
by microbial capacitive desalination.

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ergy, they care about the environment
because one doesn't exist without the
other, Thomas said.
"Oklahoma's oil and gas producers
also are Oklahoma's environmental stewards. We live, work, and raise our families
here. It is not just an industry to us, it is
our future and our children's future that
we are protecting," he said. "We also understand the significant amount of energy
it takes to power our lives. So it is just as
important to us to dedicate our time and
our careers to find ways to produce enough
energy without it costing us the integrity
of our environment and the freedom that
American energy promises."
Tying energy and the environment together, Thomas said OERB was using
the theme, "Both Matter," as the basis
for its education campaign. He added
OERB would use television advertising
as well as social media and digital advertising to distribute its messages, using
the OERB website as the centerpiece.
In testing that message, Thomas said
focus group participants appreciated the
transparency seen in the commercials,
videos and website. "They recommended
a more direct call to action in the commercials, and those are some things we
are baking into the program to drive people
a bit harder to the website," Thomas said.
He said that in addition to digital messaging, grass-roots communications remained a key component of the Both
Matter campaign. He urged OIPA mem-

162 THE AMERICAN OIL & GAS REPORTER

Treating Wastewater
In his talk on treating wastewater, Ren
pointed out that too often, operators had
to buy water for operations and then pay
for its disposal or treatment. "If there are
solutions to bring treated wastewater back
for fracturing or other uses, ideally, it
will be economic and you will not have
to worry about deep well injections, water
security, or other things," he suggested.
He said most wastewater disposal options required two or more types of technology to remove portions of the contaminants, and needed an external power
source.
Across the United States, 10 percent
of the 21 billion gallons a year of produced
water are recycled at a cost of $5 billion,
Ren said, adding the global market could
be as high as $50 billion. Many oil and
gas companies say their water-associated
handling operations account for 8-10 percent of total operating costs.
With funding from the National Science
Foundation and the Department of Energy,
Ren said the university laboratory developed a treatment process to remove salts
and organic contaminants from wastewater
simultaneously. The technology, microbial
capacitive desalination, uses microbes to
generate electricity, which powers the
removal process.
The system releases the energy held in
the contaminants' hydrocarbons, consumes
the organic material, and creates positive
and negative electrodes in the processing
cell. Unlike a battery, which uses chemical
reactions to generate electricity, the new
cell uses microbes to generate the current.
That is used to power the desalination
process, he said. The salts dissolve into
ions, which are attracted to the electrodes
and removed from the fluid.
When completed, Ren said the modular
equipment-tubes six feet long, two feet
wide and four feet high-would fit on a
flatbed truck and be brought to the well
site. The treated water then may be reused
in well operations, he said, adding, "Our
goal is to help the industry solve the
water problem, and also potentially generate revenue for operators."
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American Oil and Gas Reporter - July 2015

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