Produced Waters

The Oil and Gas Waters (OGW) project, funded by the Energy Resources Program, aims to provide information on the volume, quality, impacts, and potentially commodity recovery from water co-produced during the generation and development of domestic petroleum resources. The primary goals of this project are to meet the needs of Congress and other stakeholders in the quantification of lithium and...

The AGGER project’s purpose is to advance the understanding of geologic energy sources, generation, composition, movement, and production potential, including resource recovery from energy wastes.

This task within the Oil and Gas Waters Project focuses on the development of oil and gas resources results in substantial volumes of produced water. Particularly when produced from deep geologic formations, these waters can exhibit elevated salinity in comparison to shallow groundwater at the same location. Knowing the spatial and temporal occurrence of high salinity produced water in groundwater...

Work within this task of the Oil and Gas Waters Project focuses on quantifying the water used during hydrocarbon development and the water produced along with oil and gas.

In the “Big Data and Data Visualization” task of the Oil and Gas Waters Project, we compile and update the USGS National Produced Waters Geochemical Database and use big data approaches to provide stakeholders with effortless access and modern tools for easier use and interpretation of our data.

In the “Characterization and Reuse of Oil and Gas Waters” task of the Oil and Gas Waters Project, we collect new water samples from conventional and hydraulically fractured unconventional plays in high priority oil and gas basins and use the geochemistry of water produced along with oil and gas (a) as a tool to interpret deep basin fluid flow and to fingerprint brines from specific reservoirs, (b)...