American Oil and Gas Reporter - August 2017 - 60

SpecialReport: Hydraulic Fracturing Technology
customers truck water when hoses can
be more efficient, but saying no to a job
we know may be fraught with issues is
the right thing to do."

Careful planning and robust equipment are key to preparing produced water for reuse
in completions, says TETRA Technologies Inc. The company points to its double-jacketed
water transfer hoses as an example, noting some have been in service for ﬁve years with
no degradation in durability.

that happens, the produced water contains
slugs of oil," he notes.
To address those slugs, TETRA uses
what Donaldson calls the tried-and-true
approach to separation: let gravity separate
the waste stream into oil and water, then
collect oil from the top. "The system has
a small footprint and uses gravity differential settling technology assisted by
chemicals to recover oil with great efficiency," Donaldson says. "The technology
is proven, and in most cases, the system
recovers enough oil to pay for itself."
Donaldson adds that the system can
handle unusually large throughputs, as
great as 35,000 barrels a day.
Water Transfer
Trucking water from storage to the
well can be expensive, so TETRA generally uses lay-flat water hoses, Richie
says. "To provide a wide safety margin,
our hoses have a three-to-one safety factor
on their working pressures," he says.
"For example, the 12-inch diameter hoses
have a 200 psi working pressure and a
600 psi burst pressure."
The hoses' dual-jacket design offers
extreme durability, he adds. "The outer
layer protects the waterproof layer from
sunlight," he says. "Single-layer designs
rely on ultraviolet-stabilized additives.
As these wear off, the hose will crack."
TETRA's hoses last much longer,
Richie assures. "Some hose has been in
service for five years," he says. "When
we sent segments to the manufacturer

60 THE AMERICAN OIL & GAS REPORTER

for destructive testing, they found no appreciable degradation in the safety rating.
The three-to-one safety factor and abrasion
resistance were still there."
Donaldson says the hose is connected
through premium couplings. "They are
more expensive than some of the other
options we considered, but they are reliable
and so easy to use that they are almost
error-free, giving us a safety factor so
they will not leak over time," he describes.
To deploy and retrieve the system,
the company designed a fit-for-purpose
rapid deployment unit. "The RDV has
an extremely wide, stable base, so it can
go over grades that a skid-steer type apparatus or a telehandler should not attempt," Richie describes. "It also has a
low ground pressure, so it will not rut
landowners' property as much when the
ground is wet."
Planning is a key part of setting up
water transfer systems, Donaldson emphasizes. "It may seem simple to run a
hose across the ground, but we need to
understand many parameters that may
affect the job, including elevation changes,
line distances, water volumes and flow
rates," he stresses.
To help with prejob planning, Richie
says TETRA has developed proprietary
software. "Between that software and
personnel who understand they have stop
work authority, we have turned down a
few jobs that would not be physically
possible," he comments. "We hate to see

Optimizing Logistics
Water management will only grow in
importance, predicts Michael Chavez, director of business development for Digital
H2O, a software company that maintains
a water-focused database covering the
Permian, Eagle Ford, Barnett, Marcellus
and Bakken regions.
"In every region, we are seeing growing
water intensity," Chavez reports. "The
volumes of water used to frac wells are
increasing, which is resulting in more
produced water during the flowback period. That is making the logistics of transporting water from the well site to disposal
more complicated and increasing the need
for optimization."
Better recycling technologies have
helped, Chavez notes. "We are seeing
more water-focused midstream companies," he adds. "Dovetailing with that
trend, more private equity is coming into
the market on both the service company
side and the exploration, drilling and production side."
Chavez indicates Digital H2O is doing
what it can to streamline water management for its clients, who include service
companies such as NGL Energy Partners
and TETRA, independent producers such
as Anadarko Petroleum Corp. and Apache
Corp., and majors such as Shell.
"Most of the data we collect comes
from public sources, but they are hard to
access or understand," Chavez says. "In
addition to making the data easier to find
and understand, we provide proprietary
information. For example, we estimate
produced water volumes for Texas wells
using a proprietary algorithm that is about
95 percent accurate."
According to Chavez, the information
helps operators reduce their water management costs, which generally are their
biggest lease operating expense. "Operators are using our platform to understand
the supply and demand for disposal capacity. Sending water to a well that is at
20 percent utilization often can be more
cost-effective than sending water to one
that is closer but at 90 percent utilization,"
he illustrates.
"Operators also are using our database
to get a handle on where their water historically gets disposed. If they generally
send it to the same disposal well, they

American Oil and Gas Reporter - August 2017

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