Water and Sand: Most Used Global Resources

The Houston Chronicle recently published an article discussing the rapid growth of mobile sand mines in the Permian Basin.  As operators look for ways to further cut costs and reduce their environmental footprint, mobile sand mines help by improving logistics and reducing emissions.  The article notes that the world’s two most used resources are sand and water.  Like mobile sand mining, effective and environmentally sensible water management is in large part associated with reducing the energy intensity of operations, which includes minimizing transportation distances and maximizing the efficiency of how materials are moved. Over the last decade, a vast network of fixed pipelines has connected points of water production and points of reuse and disposal, reducing the energy expenditure of moving millions of barrels of water and eliminating the associated emissions from thousands of water-hauling trucks that are no longer required.  Data that we track in our OilfieldH2O platform indicates that the percentage of water trucked versus piped has been halved over the last 5 years – from 10% overall down to 5%.