Oilfield innovators drawn to water: 'garage entrepreneurs' rarely yield breakthroughs, but drillers listen.

• Author: Best, Allen
• Position: ENERGY REPORT

IN AUGUST, Riggs Eckelberry flew into Aspen for a renewable energy conference, but perhaps surprisingly, his message concerned traditional energy development. He aimed to talk about his company's algae-based system to help drillers clean up their water.

"They will save money, which to me is a pretty attractive case of win-win," said Eckelberry, chief executive of OriginOil.

Water is indeed a major expense for drillers operating in the Wattenberg, Raton and other oil and gas fields in Colorado. In terms of total water consumption, drilling uses only a small fraction of the state's water. But in some places, even that small quantity causes a steady procession of trucks lumbering along county roads.

Trucks are needed for two components of oil and gas extraction:

First, after drilling is completed, large volumes of water, sand and small amounts of chemicals are blasted into wells in an attempt to fracture the rock and expedite the escape of hydrocarbon molecules.

The volume of water needed for hydraulic fracturing varies. A well in the Piceance Basin, located in the Rifle-Meeker area of Colorado's Western Slope, may have anywhere from five to 13 fracks, or stages, as drillers refer to them. That's 1 million gallons of water altogether. Wells in other locations can require even more, 5 million to 8 million gallons. Drilling also results in produced water--native to the oil-and gas-bearing layers, typically 5,000 to 8,000 feet deep in the Piceance Basin. Over the wells' lifetimes--typically 30 years or more--they can continue to produce water along with hydrocarbons. This produced water typically has elements such as arsenic, solids and, almost inevitably, salt.

Because flowback and produced water typically don't meet clean water standards, they must be treated. That's where Eckelberry's company and dozens of other entrepreneurs come in.

PROMISES VS. PERFORMANCE

"We have a limited effect on heavy metals, and we do nothing for salt water," said Eckelberry. Still, he promises the process will save companies money.

But will it? Garage-tinkering entrepreneurs may inform drillers of their breakthroughs and "I listen to every one," said one drilling company environmental officer last year.

But operators say performance rarely matches promise. "The vendors believe they have the solution, but when the solution is taken to the field, oil and gas operators say it always ends up being not as fast, not as cheap, not as robust as they really need," says Russ...