THE EFFECTS OF HYDRAULIC FRACTURING WATER VOLUMES ON LIFE CYCLE WATER CONSUMPTION FOR SHALE OIL AND GAS

The rapid development of unconventional oil and gas resources from shale plays underscore the need to better understand its environmental implications, including water consumption. Water consumption during development and production has been evaluated for several shale plays from both shale gas plays and shale oil plays. This study presents an overview of results, discussing differences in spatial and temporal variability for five major shale plays: Bakken, Barnett, Haynesville, Fayetteville, and Marcellus. The results for the four shale gas plays are also incorporated into a lifecycle analysis to understand the relative magnitude of water consumption associated with development and production of gas relative to other lifecycle stages associated with natural gas use for transportation or electric power. Although shale gas consumes more water over its lifecycle than conventional natural gas consumes, when used as a transportation fuel, shale gas consumes significantly less water than other transportation fuels. When used for electricity generation, the impact of fuel production is small relative to that of natural gas power plant operations. The type of natural gas power plant is far more important than the source of the natural gas.