Underground Construction - January 2018 - 26

Making A Pipe Dream Reality
In addition, the project team
implemented novel construction
techniques. Charger Services LLC
of Midland, TX, was awarded the
contract to construct the storage
reservoirs. As the project involved
a large amount of dirt work and
mass excavation, Charger Services employed its sizeable fleet
of scrapers and mass excavation
equipment, and relied on an innovative technique for forming
the reservoir's surfaces. Charger
was able to take LAN's computer-drawn images of the reservoir's
surfaces and plug the data into the
GPS unit on its surface equipment.
This way, Charger was able to finetune the reservoir's shape to meet
specifications. Taken together,
the storage reservoir is truly an
"engineered" product offering
long-term durability and ease of
maintenance.

Project benefits
By delivering water via pipelines,
oil and gas companies can drastically reduce water management
costs, which typically run into 10s
of millions of dollars. Transportation is by far the costliest element
of water management for fracking.
Traditionally, water is transferred
via trucks or a series of transfer
pumps and flexible hose installed
above grade. The use of transfer
pumps and hoses often requires
extensive around-the-clock supervision, creates above-grade
obstructions and is costlier to the
end user when compared with below-grade permanent pipelines.
Furthermore, trucking can cost
three times more than transporting water via pipeline systems.
As the demand for water creeps
up, truck delivery grows less practical. Not only are trucks more
time-consuming supply options,
they create safety hazards and contribute to road deterioration. Additionally, these big trucks emit huge
amounts of carbon every year. By
taking trucks off the road, this
project provides a safer and more
sustainable alternative.
Also, using non-potable brack-

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Top: Liner crew installing HDPE liner in 0.5 MB storage pit. (Photo courtesy LAN); Bottom left: Pump station. (Photo courtesy LAN);
Bottom right: Pump Station suction header with risers to monitor pit levels. (All photos courtesy LAN)

ish water lessens the fracking industry's reliance on potable water.
Much of west Texas is still very dry
and some water systems remain
under stress. Demand for fresh
water is rising as the state's population grows. A 2017 report by the
Texas Water Development Board
projects this growth will be more
than 70 percent between 2020 and
2070 - from 29.5 million to 51.0
million. A virtual ocean of brackish
water lies under much of Texas.
Projects such as the Layne pipeline
that tap into this resource will enable the state to conserve and use
its potable water for drinking or
agriculture purposes.

Complex challenges
The tight deadline presented several complex challenges. One of the
biggest was the frequent change
the project team had to make in
the pipeline alignment due to issues with land acquisition. Even
though pipeline construction was
scheduled to start on May 1, land
acquisition negotiations continued
until April 2017. In a few instances, Layne couldn't reach an agreement with land owners and, as a
result, had to change the pipeline
route alignment. This added five
miles of additional pipeline to the
project during the middle of the

design. It required LAN to go back
and rerun the hydraulic models,
change the pipeline design, as well
as coordinate numerous times
with various contractors to ensure
the project stayed on schedule.
Material availability was another challenge. After evaluating
different pipe materials, sizes
and pressure classes to determine
the most economical pipe for
delivering 100,000 bpd of water
to the north end of the line, LAN
chose a 22-inch HDPE pipe for
its reliability, durability and cost
effectiveness. With HDPE being
one of the primary pipe materials
Underground Construction January 2018

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Underground Construction - January 2018

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