Abstract
As oil production in the Permian Basin surges, the impact of shale production on groundwater resources has become a growing concern. Most existing studies focus on the impact of shale production on shallow freshwater aquifers. There is little understanding of the shale development's impact on other groundwater resources (e.g., deep carbonate aquifers and deep basin meteoric aquifers). The possible natural hydraulic connections between shallow aquifers and formation water suggest such an impact can be consequential. This study explores the relationship between shale production and groundwater using produced water (PW) samples from active unconventional oil wells. Focusing on the most productive portion of the Permian Basin-the four-county region in Southeast New Mexico between 2007 and 2016, a large produced water dataset allows us to analyze the conditional correlations between shale oil production and PW constituents. The results suggest that (1) expanding from primarily conventional wells to unconventional wells during the recent shale boom has led to dramatic increases of the TDS, chloride, sodium, and calcium levels in groundwater (i.e., producing formation). (2) Nearby oil well density positively correlates with the TDS, chloride, and sodium levels in the PW samples.
Highlights
The scarcity of surface water resources in arid and semi-arid regions has acclimated anthropogenic activities to rely on groundwater to sustain
This study explores the correlation between shale oil production and groundwater in the Permian Basin to shed light on the potential impacts
This study aims to explore the potential relationship between shale production and groundwater in the Permian Basin with a relatively large produced water (PW) sample
Summary
The scarcity of surface water resources in arid and semi-arid regions has acclimated anthropogenic activities to rely on groundwater to sustain. In some of these regions, economic development has become conflicted with water conservation goals leading to groundwater contamination and over-extraction [1,2,3]. The region has experienced rapid growth in shale oil and gas development since the mid-2000s following recent innovations in drilling and fracking technologies. During the sequential oil or gas recovery process, produced water (PW) emerges as a byproduct containing mainly formation water (FW) and a small portion of the fracking fluids as flowback [5,6].
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