LECTURER: Are you all able to see my screen?
STUDENT: Yeah.
Morning, Katie.
How are you?
LECTURER: Good morning.
I'm doing well.
Thank you.
You stay here.
OK.
Well, Good morning everyone.
My name is Katie Dalberg.
I'm the manager of the Projections
and Socio Economic Analysis Department in
the Water Supply Planning Division at the Texas Water Development Board.
I'm also the contract manager for this Mining Water Use study,
which is conducted by the TWDB in the University of Texas
Bureau of Economic Geology in partnership with the U.S.
Geological Survey.
Very quickly, I just want to touch on a few housekeeping items.
I know that we've all been doing virtual
meetings for a really long time,
but just please be sure to mute yourselves so
that we can hear the presenters clearly.
Please use the chat feature or raise a hand
feature if you have any questions.
We do have dedicated time at the end of today's presentations for Q&A,
so we'll get to as many questions as we can.
And as you've noticed, I am recording today's meeting and
I will post it to our website in the next couple of weeks.
And I appreciate everyone taking the time to join
us today and joining us bright and early.
And so we look forward to sharing the results of the study.
And so today's agenda.
First, I will provide background on
the purpose of the mining water use study.
Then Dr Robert Reedy with UTBEG will discuss the methodology and results.
I will give a demonstration of the dashboard
we developed before we move into Q&A.
So as a friendly reminder, this study is an update to the previous
mining water use study that was conducted by BEG in 2011.
We received a grant from the U.S.
Geological Survey and we contracted with BEG to complete
the work and TWDB provided data support to BEG.
The purpose of this study is to provide a comprehensive
and quantitative assessment of mining
water use in Texas by developing historical
water use estimates and demand projections,
which will be used in the 2026 regional water plans.
Dr Reedy will go into more detail on these.
But as a high level overview in this study,
we accomplished the following tasks.
We developed historical water use estimates for hydraulic fracturing,
including water sources and water demand projections,
developed historical water use estimates and projections
for coal and lignite mining and aggregates.
And these results were compared to the mining
water use estimates the USGS had developed.
Then TWDB also developed an interactive dashboard which is posted to
our website and I will demonstrate later today in the presentation.
So now, Dr.
Reedy, let me stop sharing my screen and you can take over.
OK.
Hello, everybody.
Can everybody hear me ok?
Yes.
Alright, good.
Let me go through the share there.
Are you seeing my Presentation there?
Yes, we are.
OK, alright.
I don't do this that much.
So, alright, here we go.
So, as Katie said, we started this project a couple of years ago now.
And it's funded by the U.S.
Geological Survey through the board.
And as she noted, there's a couple of acknowledgements I'd like to make.
The datasets come from several sources,
all very well maintained by the Water Development Board,
The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality,
Texas Railroad Commission, the USGS and the U.S.
Energy Information Administration, the EIA.
Thanks to Katie and to Yun for very good Project Oversight
and lots of great suggestions along the way.
And then there's the legal disclaimer (LAUGHS)
for the USGS that they don't necessarily
endorse any of the Information that may or
may not be included in this, et cetera.
So again, it's kind of the 30,000 foot overview of the project.
The mining industry in Texas consists of three major sectors,
the oil and gas industry, which dominates
everything pretty much these days.
Coal mining, which is very minor now,
used to be a relatively large player historically.
And then the aggregates mining industry,
now aggregates mining does not include mines that are associated
with or that are owned and operated by cement manufacturers,
that goes in the manufacturing category.
The aggregate mine population of operations does not include
the industrial side of it, It's just the mining side.
So in the oil and gas industry, as Katie mentioned briefly,
we had three major tasks and that was to quantify the current
and historical water use and the risk of hydraulic fracturing
and also then additionally produced water volumes.
We went beyond that and also looked at saltwater disposal
and enhanced oil recovery volumes, I'll get to those later.
And then we need to look at the the sources of the water used for
hydraulic fracturing and have some idea of as far as groundwater
surface water splits and then some idea about the quality of the water,
particularly relating to groundwater sources.
And then to develop future estimates going forward to
2080 of what might anticipate hydraulic fracturing,
oil and gas, what it used to be.
Then the coal mining industry,
similar values or aspects looking at the current and future
water use values and then again same thing
for the aggregates mining industry.
So launching right into the hydraulic fracturing side of things.
The sources of data for the water volumes
were varied using the IHS database,
which is a private subscription proprietary data set
that that we have access to here at the Bureau.
Then there's the FracFocus database, which is like a warehouse for
Frac water use and chemical use, and that's publicly available.
And then there's a company called B3 Insight that mines data.
The all three of those sources mine their data
initially from the Texas Railroad Commission.
It's just that they each does somewhat different aspects
of it and stresses certain parts over others.
And most of the data for disposal is - and produced
water that we're using comes from from B3.
I'm sorry for disposal, but the produced
water side comes from the IHS database
and the Frac water comes from the FracFocus
data set and the IHS data set.
Then looking at quality,
we initially tried to look at FracFocus database.
There were some instances where they included information
on water sources and water quality.
But after we dug into it, we found that it was insufficient for
a comprehensive analysis of sources and quality from that.
So we reverted to the Water Development Board database
for groundwater samples and we generated - Well,
actually it was a report we did back in 2011 where we
looked at the probability of total dissolved solids,
TDS concentrations exceeding 1000 milligrams per liter
for all of the major and minor aquifers in Texas.
And that provides a basically a probability map of where
the water is likely to be, more or less saline.
And for this the saline break point is 1000 milligrams per liter,
anything over that is considered saline or brackish or whatever
the term that you wanna use, there's various cutoffs.
Then looking at the surface water,
groundwater splits within the hydraulic fracturing
sector using generally - physically what's
available in the area is groundwater,
some surface water and then some limited industry reporting
about where they're getting their water.
And looking forward for projections of hydraulic fracturing,
the primary development,
future development of Oil and gas pretty much anywhere is gonna
be hydraulic fracturing of unconventional reservoirs.
And so there are three major ones that will be ongoing.
They're actually four, The Barnett,
which has more or less matured at this point,
and then the Haynesville, the Eagle Ford and the Permian Basin.
And so for the latter three, there worth - we have
a total recoverable resource analysis which basically
looks at how much oil is in place and how many wells
will be required to access or to produce that oil.
So moving on to some results,
this is a map of what the Water Development Board has
defined or assigned counties to the different
play areas or regions in the state.
The data that we generate are all reported at the county
level and then in some areas at the play level.
And and so the play levels that we're using
pretty much in this are the county
areas aggregated to the various play regions as defined by the board.
And you can see the Permian Basin in the West is huge, that pink color.
And then also they have a Permian far west
sub region and together those two
basically incorporate the entire Permian Basin plus outer fringe areas.
And then similarly with the Eagle Ford, the Haynesville and the Barnett.
There are other smaller plays around that have some minor development.
But essentially everything that we're talking about here
is occurring or will occur in those four major plays.
So we looked at various water volumes coming in again
from the IHS database and from the B3 and FracFocus.
And this is an analysis of basically a snapshot of 2019 volumes by play
for the oil and gas industry with HF, which is hydraulic fracturing.
PW is Produced Water, SWD is SaltWater Disposal
and EOR is Enhanced Oil Recovery.
And you can see the combination of the Permian and the Permian Far West,
the far west got cut off there.
Those two are the Permian and they essentially dominate.
Almost everything in the state is associated with the Permian Basin.
And we are again focusing on just the Barnett, Eagle Ford,
Haynesville and Permian plays moving forward.
So looking historically, then going back and looking
at the hydraulic fracturing water use
trends and then corresponding amounts of produced
water associated with oil and gas wells.
We see very similar trends between the two
hydraulic fracturing water use since
the last report as and since 2010 has increased by a significant amount.
It was less than 50,000 acre feet, I guess,
back in 2010 and has grown to over 300,
about 320,000 acre feet in 2019, a total increase of about 700%.
The trends over that timeframe show a fairly steady increase from 2010
to 2014 as unconventional development was ramping up everywhere.
And then after 2014 and through 2016,
things slowed down a bit statewide,
but most particularly in the Eagle Ford,
which accounts for most of that decline.
The Permian Basin more or less leveled off at that time.
And then afterwards the sharp increases due
almost entirely to the Permian Basin
where things have really taken off and then the pandemic hit in 2020.
And that had effects in some areas more than others.
But overall, everything went down quite a bit.
There are a few graphs that we'll be looking
at here that look at some data past 2019.
But the baseline period for this report was 2010 through 2019,
and due primarily to completeness of reporting at the time,
we started gathering data.
2020 wasn't complete for several aspects of the data sets
we wanted to look at, so we didn't include them,
although we can include some types of data we can get to that later.
Produced water increased and decreased with
similar trends for very similar reasons.
Produced water represents initially,
it was primarily all uncut or conventional oil wells,
the old style vertical load of Frac volume type wells.
And in that it was a significant volume of water.
It was 700,000 acre feet a year of produced water,
and that's increased by about 60% to over
1 million acre feet per year now.
And so produced water reflects, of course,
production in hydraulic fracturing is much more
a reflection of drilling activity these days.
So looking at then the general broad base
of the water quality of groundwater
that's available to the different plays, the aquifers.
And again, we're restricting this analysis
primarily to the four major plays.
And within each of those four major plays,
the major and minor aquifers are listed as and represent
the kind of the general water quality available
across the play within each of the aquifers.
And we see that almost everything has
a median TDS value below 1000 milligrams
per liter and the ones that exceed that are all in the Permian.
This doesn't mean there isn't higher TDS water everywhere.
This are just median values.
And so there certainly will be higher concentrations
in some areas across all of these aquifers.
But this at the data again, all the details are in at the county level,
in the final report tables and all the data.
As I mentioned, the FracFocus database did not contain
significant water source or quality information.
So we had to kind of punt with that side of it.
We're hoping that the Groundwater Protection Committee,
the council committee that runs the FracFocus,
they are planning on incorporating new information, but it'll be a while
before significant amounts of that are available for analysis.
So looking at individual plays and looking
at the water quality available.
We looked at the TDLR, the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation,
submitted drillers reports as the (UNKNOWN)
database which contains every groundwater
well more or less completed in the state
since about 2002 since it was initiated.
And we look at only the sector of wells or the well
types for intended use of fracking supply,
rig supply and industrial intended water use.
We include industrial because in some areas there's industrial
water use wells that show up way out in the middle of nowhere.
And so it's kind of difficult to think
that there's a great deal of industry
going on in some of the areas where these wells are showing up,
but they're relatively small number in the total overall view.
But in the Barnett, you can see up in North central Texas,
around the Fort Worth area, north and south of there in west.
That for about 1500 groundwater wells were completed over that
period and you're looking at cumulative wells completed.
The activity in the Barnett kind of started falling off after around
2012 or so and with only minor continued development since then.
And 96% of all of those wells are completed in the Trinity Aquifer,
which is fairly high quality.
Then the remainder 4% of wells were combined
in either the Woodbine or the Cross Timbers.
Cross Timbers is a new aquifer definition and that's to the west there.
So this gives us an idea of the footprint of where
the wells that supply the oil and gas industry.
And this was used then to develop estimates of
the salinity of the water that's available.
Going forward then to the Eagle Ford Play, we see similar trends,
although much sharper increase when development
started about 2009, 2010.
In the Eagle Ford play, we've got about 3700 wells and several aquifers.
The main ones being the Gulf Coast aquifer,
which kind of hog the southwest or southeast
border of the play and the farther to
the northwest you got the Carrizo-Wilcox,
comes in the Yegua-Jackson's in between them
and the Queen City in between them as well.
Many of the wells go through the shallower
formations to get to the Carrizo-Wilcox
because it's very prolific and produces pretty
fresh water over a very large area.
So look then to the Haynesville, the Haynesville is very interesting.
There's very few wells in the Haynesville as
far as oil and gas wells are concerned.
But there's a very large,
disproportionately large number of groundwater wells that have
been drilled for the oil and gas industry,
with almost 8000 wells drilled since 2002.
Although again, maybe for about the last eight or so,
eight to ten years, the activity has been quite slow there.
And most of those wells are completed in
the Carrizo-Wilcox are probably quite shallow,
no more than a couple of 300 feet at the most.
And so the water quality in the Haynesville as far
as groundwater is concerned is is very low TDS.
And then finally the Permian Basin which has a very
large number of aquifers over a large area.
So I split them into two screens here.
The first one I'll show you is where the major aquifers in the area,
which include the Ogallala, the Pecos Valley
and the Edwards-Trinity Plateau.
As far as numbers of wells completed,
there have been quite a large number
and the increase has been very steady since development began around,
just a little before 2010, but has been
increasing very steadily since then.
The Dockum aquifer, which I'll show you later,
is usually fairly saline under most of the area where they're using it.
And that accounts for a fairly significant amount
of the water wells that there are out there.
The Edwards-Trinity Plateau is fresher water
and is also an agricultural irrigation water source.
And so in areas where there's irrigation going on,
there's relatively limited competition for it.
The oil and gas industry is going deeper for their water.
Underlying all of these aquifers is the Permian Aquifer,
which is the deeper strata itself, which locally contains some water.
And the industry is utilizing that as much as possible because
it's not competing with anybody for drinking water,
irrigation water, and it suits their needs.
In some cases it may be the only water available.
In the Pecos Valley aquifer again,
despite the apparent large numbers of wells over there,
there are not that many in the Delaware Basin to the west,
simply because the development rates haven't caught up.
Most of the development to date has been in the Midland Basin.
In the Delaware didn't get really started
until more than about five years ago.
And then, of course with the pandemic,
things have settled down a little bit.
And then moving on to the minor aquifer distribution,
you can see that pink areas,
the extent of the Dockum which covers a large underlies areas under
the under the Ogallala aquifer and the Edwards Trinity Plateau.
And then off in the west in the Delaware Basin,
you've got the Edwards, the Pecos Valley,
but then the Rustler Formation would be probably
the next most utilized aquifer in that area.
And then there's again many other small unmapped aquifers out
there little perhaps zones that they're tapping into as well.
So looking overall then at water quality across all of these plays,
this basically show the median or the probabilities of TDS exceeding
1000 milligrams per liter by aquifer within the different zones.
So like in the Barnett, the Trinity has much lower probability
of higher TDS compared to the Woodbine.
And in actually the Cross Timbers though it has relatively high TDS,
most places the TDS is very low in the areas where
they've tapped it for the oil and gas industry,
it's at the very edge of the aquifer there.
And then the numbers that are there,
those represent the probabilities across all
of the wells that were in the TDLR database.
So 93% of the wells are in the fresh category and 77% of the wells are
in the brackish or the areas in the brackish water over 1000 TDS.
And so we see that the Eagle Ford, in the Haynesville,
as well as the Barnett have relatively lower probabilities
for the aquifers that are most utilized.
But when you get to the Permian Basin, it's kind of a flip.
Everything out there is a higher TDS in general and the wells
that they're using tend to be more on the brackish side.
Then trying to decide about the splits between
how much water is being sourced
from groundwater or surface water or from re-use is rather problematic.
The information is not reported.
So we essentially look at an area and determine.
Well is there enough surface water available?
And in most cases there is not.
Surface water is is less convenient for this purpose because
it's expensive to move from the source to where you need it,
whereas you can drill a well close to where you need it.
And so most of the water being used by
the oil and gas industry is groundwater.
About 89% and only 1% statewide is coming from surface water.
Then the remaining 10% from reuse
and reuse is another difficult category.
And based upon anecdotal reports, again,
there's generally a lack of formalized reporting going on in there.
We were hoping to find that in the FracFocus database, we did not.
And so we don't really have a good handle on that.
But this is our best estimate at this point.
The Bossier and Haynesville plays essentially are the Haynesville
area and there has historically been a significant
amount of proportion of the water that has been used
in that area has come from surface water sources.
But you can see overall, it's a very minor amount at the state level.
So, this then is an overall map symbolized
by the total amount of water used
in each county area for the hydraulic fracturing,
the oil and gas industry.
And it's about 320,000 acre feet of water we used in
2019 to complete over 11,000 unconventional wells.
And this volume represents 80% of the total mining water
use when you add the coal and aggregates industry in.
Water use was primarily in the Permian Basin and the Eagle Ford Play,
which together constituted about 96% of all
water use for oil and gas in the state,
followed by the relatively minor amounts from Haynesville.
And then all other areas combined across the whole state was another 1%.
So now looking at projections, we have to go look forward.
We have to like Wall Street, we got to look backward
and look at some performance metrics here.
And so we went back to kind of the earlier days of
development and just looked at trends across time.
And this is the Barnett, you can see that the number of oil
and gas wells has fallen off drastically, it's next to nothing.
It's at about 40 wells a year, 45 wells a year being completed.
Well, oil and gas wells being completed across
the entire region, that's in the black line.
And between 2008 and 2019, there were about 15,000
oil and gas wells completed, almost all gas actually.
And then the blue line, which is associated with the right side
axis is the median hydraulic fracturing water use intensity.
And that is the metric of the amount of water being
used per foot of horizontal length in the well.
And that's kind of our baseline statistic for doing projections
because if we know how long the wells are
gonna be drilled and how many gallons per foot they're
gonna be applying for hydraulic fracturing,
then we can have an estimate of the total amount of water that
will ultimately be required to complete X number of wells.
But in the Barnett there's not much looking forward.
We did not do a resource assessment here because it's largely
matured and the current water use is projected to be
- it's about 1000 acre foot per year
and focused only in kind of the core areas,
those four counties of the play.
And recent trends in drilling indicate that
the drilling may cease altogether by 2030.
So there's only a relatively minor amount in the big picture
of hydraulic fracturing water use remaining of about 11,000
acre foot over the remaining life of the place
we might as we expected, to peter out.
Looking at the Eagle Ford Play.
We did a resource assessment there.
I don't have the oil and gas production numbers
of recoverable resources in place.
Those are in the report, but they're not germane
to the water use here particularly.
So black lines again shows the trends in the drilling.
And there's the steep fall off between 2014
and 16 that we saw in the overall statewide trend.
And then things recovered somewhat for a group 17, 18 and 19.
But then during the pandemic and since
the number and the data is not quite complete.
There are the numbers of wells have fallen
off due either both to a lack of report,
the reporting hasn't caught up yet.
And the 2020 numbers may be relatively close
at the point when I made this graph.
But we see that the water use intensity has approached and leveled
off at about 2000 gallons per foot and has remained fairly steady.
And we find that this trend is similar across the other plays.
And so we used the 2017-19 drilling rates of about 1800 wells per year.
And the resource analysis for the Eagle Ford projects that
there will be a total of about 112,000 wells at maturity.
And so at 1800 wells per year going forward.
That would if at a steady rate, at that drilling rate,
it'll go on through 2071.
And then based on that 2000 gallons per foot water use intensity.
And the 1800 wells per year, that equates to about 56,000
acre feet per year again assuming steady drilling rates.
And ultimately, the area under the curve,
which is independent of the drilling rate,
will be about 2.9 million acre feet.
And so that's kind of the overall total estimate that we expect over
whatever time they actually do end up developing the Eagle Ford.
Going to the Haynesville.
You see that the drilling rates are very low there.
They've only completed about 1200 wells in the Haynesville.
And if you look at the the green points,
which I hadn't been highlighting here.
Those represent the locations of the oil and gas wells,
the unconventional ones.
And you see that there's quite a lower density in Texas.
About 80%, I believe, of the development has been in Louisiana,
which is not part of this report.
So in the Texas part of the Haynesville, we have about 17,600
wells at maturity and they've only drilled about 1200.
So at 120 wells per year as consistent with the 2018, 19 and 20 data.
It'll take me over a century to complete drilling there.
I don't know if that will pan out that way, that would be interesting.
Come back in 2156 and I'll tell you.
Based on the 2700 gallons per foot water use intensity,
which is highest in the state.
There would be about 7500 acre feet per year
and about a million acre feet overall,
which is really nothing for the East Texas water budget.
Quite went up there and lots of water available.
Then moving to the £800 gorilla here is the Permian Basin.
And you can see the map there shows the locations
of both horizontal and vertical,
unconventional oil and gas wells.
And many of those the verticals have fallen off.
I don't show them in the graph, but they peaked in 2012 and they're
down to only a couple of hundred a year now, relatively minor.
And that's because they were trying to take
advantage of hydraulic fracturing.
But the horizontal drilling technology hadn't caught up yet.
And so everything started shifting to the horizontal drilling.
And you can see the the numbers of wells increased
across both basins to around, what?
it was about 4100 wells average,
2200 wells per year across those basins.
And then the the data for 2020 were pretty complete and there was
a steep decline from the pandemic effect there, the numbers of wells.
But again, the water use was very consistent at 2000 gallons per foot,
just like the Eagle Ford Play.
And also that's holding true across both basins
in the Delaware Basin or in the Permian Basin.
So looking forward then.
SPEAKER 1: Assuming there's different drilling rates in
each of the basins and the drilling will
actually complete somewhat earlier in
the Midland based upon that drilling rate.
Some time, I think, I think in the 2060's.
But the Delaware will continue on to 2096, again, at these rates.
And ultimately, almost a quarter million wells will have been drilled.
And this just looks at the Wolfcamp A and B formations.
There are half a dozen other potential reservoirs
that have not even been evaluated.
So, there's a lot, lot of drilling left in the Permian Basin.
And ultimately, based upon just the Wolfcamp A and B,
though, we'd be looking at 210,000
acre feet per year going forward with a total of
12 million acre feet required to drill out...are
complete those wells using these assumed values that we have.
So, looking...this is a summary of all of the oil and gas
water use across the different place stacked there.
And we see it's very steady because we're
assuming constant drilling rates.
We don't...it would be foolhardy, I think,
to try to estimate what future economic black swans might show up.
And so, we're looking at just total amounts there.
And annually, the oil gas industry is expected to use about 315,000
acre feet per year through at least 2060 and declining
afterwards as assuming that the...that
the Permian Basin matures, and as things fall off, of course,
I expect that to actually grow and continue.
But for planning purposes, this is the best we
can do without knowing what might happen.
So now, moving on to the coal mining industry,
this is a shorter section because there's just not much of it anymore.
The water data for this were provided by the mine operators
themselves through annual water use surveys,
and there's a 100...there's a 100% reporting.
They're interested in maintaining as good PR as they can.
And then, the water use projections are based upon
current industry plans and/or equipment lifetimes.
So, I'll get to that in a minute.
So, here's a map of where all the coal mines that have
been active in the last few decades are in Texas,
and they're all associated with outcrop areas of the Wilcox Group,
which is the inland kind of grey band across the state
or the Manning formation in the Jackson Group.
And the more...in the more coast word band.
And we see the black ones symbols,
those are mines that have all closed
and the red ones are the active mines.
There are only four active mines in the state currently.
And one of those, the one in the north to South Hartsville mine,
is scheduled to close at the end of next year,
along with its associated power plant.
The coal quality is almost entirely lignite,
except for the Eagle Pass mine in the far south west,
which was bituminous grade coal,
but that they stopped mining there last year.
All of the mines are surface water or surface operations.
And so, there's no underground coal mining in Texas.
And it's...so, it's all strip mining,
and water use is generally for de-watering or depressurizing purposes.
De-watering would be for water that either comes in through
precipitation or is seepage from the ground,
from an aquifer that may have been intercepted.
And depressurizing is for...as they remove overburden,
if they get to near the top of...of a confined aquifer,
the pressures in that aquifer can cause heaving of the mine floor,
and it creates a very dangerous situation.
And so, they pump the water out of...underneath to depressurize.
And in all cases, the water is almost entirely disposed
of by re-injection nearby or in some...and
in some cases in the past,
there have been some discharges to surface water
bodies when the water quality was cooperative.
And so, looking at trends in coal mining across Texas,
since the beginning of time...of
data that has been archived by the Energy Information Agency,
we see that coal mining,
the black line, the number,
the active amounts of coal being produced across Texas was
about 55 million tons a year through the 90's
and then declining gradually after that.
And then, after about 2012, see what happened then?
Large decline in the total numbers and total amount of of
coal being mined and in the number of active coal mines.
And the decline is due to a shift from...for a couple of reasons.
There's a shift away from Texas lignite to cleaner sub-bituminous coal,
grade coal from the Wyoming Powder River Basin.
But then, there's also the political pressures to reduce greenhouse
gas emissions and the trends away from coal burning fire...coal,
coal-fired power plants towards natural gas and other energy sources.
Currently, as I said, there are about four mines active in the state.
The South Hallsville and its Pirkey mine,
a power plant will close late next year.
So, looking at the total amounts of water reported, they're very small.
It's about 4,000 acre feet per year.
Currently, that's only 1% of all the mining
water use and it's in located in...in
those three counties highlighted there,
and the one in the southwest, the other, I'll go back here, the...oops.
Well, anyway, sorry, I'm moving around too fast.
The Southernmost mine is the San Miguel
mine and they report zero water use.
So, the three remaining ones you're looking
at right now, mostly, it's groundwater.
About 20% of that water reported was from surface water sources.
So, this would be then a summary of the projections.
We see about a 4,000 acre feet per year going
forward for the next few couple of decades.
And then...and that assumes that the Kosse and the Calvert mine,
which were the two in the center part of the state,
those are...they don't have any plans,
stated plans at this point to cease operations, cease mining.
And so, each of those has what's called a million
mouth power plant and associated power plant.
And each of those power plants relies 100%
on the coal coming from that mine.
And so, the...assuming the mine doesn't run out of coal,
the power plant, though, has a design lifetime for the boiler.
And so, these...the Calvert Associated
Power Plant forgets which one it is,
is going to be matured or its boiler lifespan
will be obtained in the 2040,
sometime, and then, some time...I think it's 2061,
the Kosse mine, the power plant there will mature.
So, moving on now to the final category of when water
reduces the aggregates mining water use industry.
These volumes of water reported by industry operators
to both the...well, to the TWDB and the TCEQ.
They both coordinate on this.
TCEQ is the licensing agency, and they have annual water use surveys
with greater or lesser degrees of success in reporting.
And in some cases, the data sets...we
obtained the data set from both the board and the TCEQ
and justified them together and came up with a total
of about 1300 registered aggregate operations,
including many that were closed at this point or whatever,
but that was the population we started out with.
The TCEQ contact that some of them personally made some notes,
on phone notes about the responses that they got verbally.
And so, that figured into the...to the final data set, as well.
Most of the operators did report either zero
water use or some amount of water use.
For those that didn't respond,
I went through the process of tracking them down
through Google imagery and taking a look at what the site looked like,
and looking for signs of water use,
like online equipment or any of the pump houses or anything.
And then, I could find and then, in using that information combined
with any nearby operations and what the general local trend was,
whether they were using water or not,
it came up with estimates of water use
for those sites that didn't report.
And then, making projections forward,
we're using population growth estimates,
either positive or negative changes by county from the Texas...from
the TWDB water plant, the current water plant.
So, the projections are based on a one-for-one
percentage increase in population,
on the assumption that aggregates are used primarily for construction,
new construction, ongoing needs,
which would expand as population increases.
So, this is where all the aggregate mines are located in the state.
Most of them were mapable to some degree.
There were a couple of hundred, I think altogether
that didn't have point locations.
But of those, many of those,
the ones that didn't have a coordinate location,
there was some county information.
So, this map symbolizes both the points where I have them and then,
the county, total numbers where...which
include the points and then,
the additional ones that I didn't have point locations for,
but did have the county information.
Of the total dataset, only 78% of the operations...I'm
sorry, the remaining unlocated 78% of operations,
which represent about 6% of all the data,
were either inactive or reported zero water use.
And as you can see, the operations tend to cluster
near population centers and then also,
in the Permian Basin, where they're mining sand for fracking operations.
And so, that's becomes a significant part
of the water use in that region.
Now, looking at...these are the results, essentially.
The total amount of water used by the aggregate
industry was estimated to be just under 75,000
acre feet in 2019, and that represents about
the remaining 19% of all mining water use statewide.
The reported volumes accounted for 96% of all
of the water use reported...in this report,
and 84% of operators reported,
including zero water use or for some positive water use.
And see that the number of...from
the reporting is about 30% give or take of
the total of operations actually use water.
The rest don't.
They're operations.
And zero water use, something that again, that population of 1,295
includes plants that have been closed and the zero water in...they're
also included in zero water use and inactive sites, as well.
The estimated portion based upon the Google
imagery expansion was relatively minor,
represents only about 4% of all of the total.
Water use was estimated for the remaining
16% of operations that didn't report,
and most of those were assigned zero water use based upon inspection.
They were either overgrown and obviously,
are not being currently active.
But in some cases, in that minor number,
there was evidence of water use and they were
located near other systems that used water.
And so, we included that estimates into the...into the total.
And so, looking across the...
there are sub sectors in the aggregate industry
and the primary categories are dimensions stone,
crushed stone, and sand and gravel production.
And this table divides all of those into their categories.
And the total amounts of water used by each shows that about two
thirds of all of the water use is for sand and gravel mining,
and essentially, the rest of it is used for crushed stone operations.
And then, looking within each of those
categories where they get their water,
almost everybody gets their water from groundwater,
are about 80% and there's about 79% and then,
about 19% are surface water and about 2% reuse,
reuse being recycled water within their system,
water use multiple times.
And so, looking forward at the aggregate projections,
the mining water use is expected to grow by about
an average of about 10% per decade or 1% per year,
with some ups and downs from that, in keeping in pace with
the projected populations from the state water plant.
And so, water use is projected to increase by about 70% through 2080
from its current values up to about 130,000 acre feet per year.
So overall, now looking at all sectors,
the total mining water use in the state for 2019 was just under 400,000
acre feet, dominated by oil and gas sector at 80%, and then,
followed by the aggregate and coal mining sectors.
The greatest water use volumes in the map shows the total,
and you can see it pretty much reflects what
was going on with the oil and gas industry,
and the greatest amounts are being used in the Permian Basin region,
which also includes the frac sand,
the mining operations from...under the aggregate category,
and then, the Eagle Ford play areas.
And overall mining water use represents about a little
under 3% of total annual water use in Texas,
which is about 14 million acre feet according to the recent...I
think it was 2021 numbers from the board.
And then, looking at projections going forward,
we see the oil and gas baseline remains steady.
These are just stacked graphs of the three previous
ones that showed the individual sectors.
Unfortunately, the graphing software wants to color coal
everywhere and that basically after 2040 at zero,
the...at the very top there but aggregates are responsible
for the growth between now and 2060.
And then after that, maturing of the...of
the oil and gas sector fields at least as far as they have been
assessed to date or responsible for the decline overall,
while the aggregates continue to increase.
So in a minute, Katie is going to talk about the data dashboard at
the Water Development Board site that brings all of this data together.
In addition, there's the PDF of the report,
and there's data tables associated with all of this.
Looking forward, potential future work that...future
studies could really benefit from more detailed reporting
by the oil and gas industry regarding water volumes by source,
whether it be groundwater, surface water,
or re-use of produced water, which, as in particularly,
the Permian has a large potential for reducing
demand of groundwater by simply recycling the water
that they produce from other nearby wells.
The trick is getting it where they need it, when they need it,
and that infrastructure is being built.
But we don't really know how it's going to pan out at this point.
And then, the other side is that having some
idea of what the general water quality is,
that they're...of the water that they're using.
And knowing all this would benefit everybody.
And then beyond that, again, particularly in the Permian Basin,
looking at further assessments of total recoverable resources,
both refining the current ones that we have with some other...including
potentially economic factors that might increase or decrease
the total number of feasible well drilling locations.
And then, also to assess the very large number of oil and gas
reservoirs that have not been evaluated for development.
And that's it.
SPEAKER 2: Well, thank you, Bob.
I'm just gonna very quickly point out a few things on the website,
and then we will get to questions.
SPEAKER 1: How do I share your...
SPEAKER 2: They did put the link to the website in the chat.
On the website, we have the report PDF, along with the appendices,
and we have our dashboard here.
I know this might be hard to see,
so I'm just gonna very quickly kind of touch on just how to use it.
So, it starts off with a splash page and you can click
on these tabs along the side and the data pulls up.
So, we have...in this one, this is actually looking at TWDB's water
use survey and non-surveyed mining estimates over time and also,
by source, groundwater, surface water, and reus,e
and you can filter like by region.
So for instance, region F is largely the Permian,
and you can see how the data changes.
We have projections.
So, this actually combines the TWDB's historical
water use data that we were just
looking at on the previous tab with
the data that I got just presented on.
So, we've got the draft projections and
the static green line from this study and then,
we have the projections from the 2022 state
water plan in the solid red line,
and the historical data 2010 to 2019.
These final charts actually show the projected
water use breakdown by mining types,
the oil and gas, the aggregate and coal.
And so, you can see that from 2030 to 2080,
the big changes that we're projecting in oil and gas,
water use, and then, how much aggregate spread increase.
There's other tabs here.
We have historical water use from TWDB's, water use assessments.
The specs are down by mining type.
We have a data table for people who prefer tables rather than visuals.
And then, this tab is actually TWDB...I'm
sorry, BET's data from table 1-1a,
and it's showing, as Bob was talking about,
fracking water use and produced water, saltwater disposal,
enhanced oil recovery, and injection volumes,
as well as wells completed.
And you can actually choose place.
So, we could look at what we call the Permian-Far west,
and then from there,
there's this little double arrow button and then you can zoom
into counties and see this data broken down by counties.
And so, this dashboard just provides a way to visualize as just another
tool to support the reports and tables that BEG put together.
So, we do have a few questions that I want to get to.
So, there is the question: does this data incorporate
the brackish water study information?
And a follow up: much of the reused data is reported
in companies sustainability reports.
And so, Bob, you kind of mentioned, you know, trying to...in this study,
we were trying to get re-use data for oil and gas,
and not an experience, I guess.
SPEAKER 1: Right.
Well, a couple of the companies do report
on their websites but they're...we
haven't found that to be thorough enough to
be really something that we could look at,
and only some operators are doing it.
We just basically found that we weren't getting consistent enough
data across the industry to make a really good estimate.
So, that's why I think what we need to do
is that is to require reporting in that,
because that's the only way you're gonna
get a uniform and compatible formatting
of the data between different site operators
in the Permian in particular.
SPEAKER 2: Thank you.
I do want to be mindful of everyone's time.
So, you know, we had booked an hour.
It's 9:59, but we have a couple more questions.
So, people want to stay on and we can continue those questions.
And then, I do plan to post this online.
And of course, you can always reach out
to me if you have more questions.
I need to drop off.
But I think we do...Mark, you have your hand up.
Did you want to ask a question?
MARK: I had a couple of things.
Mark (UNKNOWN) on the Southwest Mail County, 42 years.
Upstream oil and gas engineering.
When ExxonMobil, I retired, grew up and became a coal farmer.
Robert, your presentation's excellent.
I've done my fair share of projections
over the years, and it was very clear.
What you have in your projection is what we always see in forecast.
We forecast what we know.
And you're forecasting a drop off in the hydraulic fracturing.
The chances of additional technology will be there.
That's a comment.
And so, that off is interesting.
I have studied the TWDB, the water board's 22 forecast and mining.
I'll just put my chart back up here.
The mining category goes from 408,000 to 407,000 acre feet to down 281.
And I was very interested.
I did an aggregate estimate using USGS data
and the population forecast growth of 73%.
I started 40,000 acre feet below you and I ended 40,000
acre feet below you with the estimate I made for the average high.
So, very, very consistent.
My starting point was low.
And what was of concern to me is in the broad picture of the TWC,
you're reducing agricultural irrigation,
we're reducing mining, and we're putting it all into municipal.
We're gonna have well-fed citizens with a glass
of water on their table and nothing to eat.
I mean, that's...that you could, you could imply from that conclusion.
My bank point is, I'm impressed.
You nailed the aggregate industry's water
use in a totally different method.
I spent my last ten years doing aggregate mining or excuse me,
oil and gas, oil sands mining in Alberta Province.
I was the headquarters engineer for the...our imperial oil affiliate.
I went back and I came up with a number 50 gallons
of water per ton of aggregate processed.
And that's how I got my estimates,
almost exactly the same curves years just off of that difference.
(INTERRUPTION)
SPEAKER 1: We don't have aggregate tonnage reporting in Texas,
that I should have added that to my future work.
That would be, again.
So, you can apply some and we'd have some
idea of water use intensities like we
do in the oil and gas industry of how
many gallons per ton are being used.
And we've heard numbers as low as 50
and up to 100 to 150 gallons per ton.
MARK: I've correlated that to the Edwards aquifer
permits for the mines around here,
and C-Max for example has a really, really large Edwards aquifer permit.
When you sort the permit, T is in the Edwards aquifer
there at the top along with (UNKNOWN), etc.,
Hanson has a much lower and they went out looking for irrigation
water and had to rent it from the city shirts, etc.
and add all that up.
It comes up right on spot on to my 50 gallons per ton processed,
and like I said, we did use the USGS data for aggregate.
Pretty interesting.
Anyway, I know you all are time pressed,
but I wanted to put those points out there.
My encouragement to you is look beyond what
you know and keep those curves flat.
I was a young engineer in 1973, and we were running out of oil and gas.
And you see where that got us?
Those curves drop like a rock.
They never did drop, actually.
SPEAKER 1: Right...and right.
Right about the time, everything was gonna be global, global freezing.
You know, the global winter, nuclear winter or
whatever they were calling it at the time.
So yeah, the black swans always come out to bite you,
so you just have to give a nod to them and say,
you know, that we know what we know now
and that's what we're used to anticipate.
MARK: Yeah.
I said in ten years or more ago in our research
studies on horizontal drilling,
and look where that's taken us.
Three, four, five, six kilometer lengths,
50 to 60 stages of multi-frack activity at a single well,
you know, where is it gonna go next?
Anyway....
SPEAKER 1: Some wells are using over 40 million gallons
of water in a single well to frack,
though the Carsons are long and all of that but...and
they're still maintaining that median 2000 gallons per foot.
But when the wells get longer and longer, the total volumes go up.
MARK: And by the way, I like your correlation to gallons per foot.
That's, I think that's really homing in on the the key driver.
SPEAKER 1: Right.
Right.
Well, that's the baseline we can use to...for
the projections, that's for sure.
MARK: The link (UNKNOWN) that gets us to the study and this presentation.
MARK: Yes, well, I haven't posted the presentation,
but I'm sure that'll be available, too.
SPEAKER 2: Yeah.
So, I plan to post this presentation in the next couple of weeks,
but the report and tables are on that link.
Yes.
SPEAKER 2: Good.
Yeah, I think it's important because my last
statement will be this: all of our leaders,
state leadership on down are focusing on maximum growth.
The governor's driving that.
No questions asked, no need to debate it.
What we're not looking at, I can't find a single entity,
including the water board's report,
that says we need to match growth with
availability of our key resources.
In other words, we're gonna run out of water.
Our plan for all these (UNKNOWN).
Ocala Trinity is so many feet depletion per year, but there is no plan.
SPEAKER 1: Right.
It's planned depletion and what it is.
MARK: And we're gonna...as a group, we're gonna have to change that
if we want to preserve living in our beautiful Texas.
It's gonna reach a water level of water shortages
of (UNKNOWN) before it's over.
It's already happened in westward, in the western state.
OK.
I don't want to dominate it.
You guys are doing a good job.
Katie, Robert, thank you.
SPEAKER 2: Thank you.
Thank you for your comments.
So, we have another question regarding the coal mining.
So, is the true consumptive use of water for coal mining nearly zero?
I understand it is re-injected or discharged to surface water bodies.
SPEAKER 1: Yeah.
Mostly, it's discharged.
They might use some minor amounts of water on site
for dust control or for washing of equipment.
But mostly, it's something they just wanna get rid of.
And so, they're pumping groundwater or water that has seeped into
a collection pond in their...within their mine boundary.
And they're moving that water out.
If the water quality is good enough and they get the permits,
they'll discharge it to surface water.
But otherwise, they'll go some distance away
and pump it right back into the groundwater.
So, the consumptive uses are really fairly minor for the coal,
the coal mining operations.
Now, the power generation plants will consume
water for their cooling systems,
and that's a separate issue.
That's not part of this study.
SPEAKER 2: We had another question regarding GCD's,
groundwater conservation districts.
And so, I had reached out during this study to get data from them.
And I...the data that I did receive, I poured it on to BET,
but can you speak to how that was incorporated into the study?
SPEAKER 1: Sure.
Sure.
And I should have mentioned that is the data source,
too, because there were about three or four,
as I recall, it was a handful, about six,
maybe GCD's that did report some kinds of water use.
We were able to incorporate most, if not all of that into the numbers.
And where I had reporting by the GCD,
it often supplemented the data from non-reporting sites
that otherwise didn't report to respond to
the TCEQ or to the TWDB in the water surveys.
But they did respond to their GCD's and GCD has passed it on to us.
And so, everything that was reported by GCD,
that I could locate a system to assign it to that water was...in
all cases, that were almost all cases,
it was water that wasn't reported initially.
Or in some cases, it was slightly different than what had been reported.
I used the larger of the two volumes.
SPEAKER 2: Thank you.
I saw that Cliff...I think you raised your hand.
Would you like to ask a question?
CLIFF: Yeah.
Thank you.
Excuse me.
My question is: within aggregates, we know that
there are practices that could be applied
that would reduce water use without necessarily
reducing output of product.
And so, my question is, does the Water Development Board
have any or plan to have any programs or incentives
or strategies for facilitating the adoption of the best
management practices that would reduce water use?
Just make more water efficient operations.
SPEAKER 2: That's a great question.
I, you know, I think that I'm not aware of any programs.
That's not to say there aren't any.
I'm just not familiar with any TWDB aggregate related
Best Management Practices for water efficiency.
CLIFF: Thanks.
SPEAKER 2: And that's a really good lead into our next question,
which is: what assumptions impacted on
trends in aggregate mining water use?
Any notion of hitting maximum recoverable aggregate?
SPEAKER 1: No, we didn't include any kind of analysis of the mined product itself.
It was all based upon the assumption that the demand for
aggregates would increase in proportion to population.
And so, that was, again, we don't know how much aggregate they're
mining or exactly or where, because it's not reported.
And so...we're not in the business of making up data.
And so, we just used the best information
we had at the time that's available
and that's consistent with what others have done, as well.
And so, no, we do not include any estimate
of recoverable aggregate resource.
SPEAKER 2: Thank you.
Well, that's all the questions that I see.
I really appreciate everyone's time.
Thank you for joining us today.
And please feel free to reach out to me if you
have any questions and check out our website,
and you can see the report that BEG put together
and all of the tables and supporting data.
So, thank you so much, everyone, and have a great rest of your day.
SPEAKER 1: Thank you.