Building a Produced Water Budget for New Mexico: Phase I – Database Construction

Published Date:

August 2021

Authors:

Martha Cather, Raven Goswick

Abstract:

The primary objective of this research was to build a geospatial database of oilfield water volume information that could be linked to the existing produced water quality databases. The State of New Mexico provides water production and injection data on a monthly basis, by well. We have compiled this information into a database that will allow us to conduct temporospatial and stratigraphic analysis, to determine in greater detail locations and volumes of water production and injection, and in doing so to have a better understanding of the overall “budget” for oilfield waters in New Mexico. Data includes volumes by month, disposition (produced or injected), location (lat/long and section/township/range), current operator, and pool. Additional well information has been added, with some improvement to the data that is available from the original state data source. Produced water quality data from the Petroleum Recovery Research
Center (PRRC) and the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) databases is also provided. This database will be the basis for several other collaborative efforts including work with New Mexico State University (NMSU) on joining information with existing water quality data, with
other researchers at New Mexico Tech (NMT) on examining impacts of injection to stress response in the Permian Basin, and with The University of New Mexico (UNM) on their efforts to identify water and wastewater management trends. A secondary objective of this study has been to try to establish collaborative efforts with operators/service providers to obtain detailed information not available from public sources on water usage, water composition, and recycling efforts. This information will allow us to check database numbers from public sources and begin to create a framework for a future risk assessment study.

Download:
Technical Report 395

Keywords:
produced water, water quality