Centerfield

H2O: It's not just for drinking

Believe it or not, the USA has one of the largest reserves on the planet of a highly prized liquid resource. Fresh Water! (I'm talking about the Great Lakes by the way.) Interesting enough, water is also a major part of energy production.

I was over on theoildrum.com , and on one of their threads a commenter said:

“...My company is currently suspending drilling operations in Oklahoma due to lack of available water. State, municipal and private water owners have all told us that they will no longer sell water to us. We are experiencing similar problems in Colorado, Wyoming and New Mexico, but not to the degree we have encountered in Oklahoma.
So what we have here in Oklahoma is one resources scarcity(water) precluding the extraction of another (petroleum) declining resource.....”

I knew they used water in oil and gas drilling, but evidently they use substantial quantities.

On the other hand, I have to wonder if the reason water was withheld from the drilling company was because it was a scarce resource, or because their operations caused problems for locals. I have previously read about problems with natural gas drilling operations bad habits. Evidently they pressurize the bore holes to fracture the rock and let the gas seep out. If you have a nearby water well, the water can become undrinkable, or your equipment could be violently expelled from the ground.

Here is a graph of natural gas production in the USA

Water is also a problem when it comes to alternative fuel production. Large quantities of water are used during the creation of ethanol and during the Fischer-Tropsch coal to gasoline process. Large amounts are also used in the extracting of oil from oil shale and tar sand. The quality of effluent from these processes is also a problem. If you're in an area where water is scarce, dumping polluted water is not going to make you popular.

Then there was the little problem France had with its nuclear power plants. Seems that a recent drought endangered their ability to produce power. Everyone calls it “nuclear” power but it's steam that makes the turbines spin. No water means no steam. No steam means no power.

I was raised in the northeast, and spent the second half of my life in the south. To little water was never really a problem for me. In both cases I always lived the proverbial stones throw from a major lake or river. Every decade or so there were some dry years, but I never went thirsty. In fact, rainfall rates in Alabama are occasionally measured in inches per hour. There is a reason the TVA built so many dams around here, and the road side ditches are 5 foot deep.

That's not the story in a lot of other places, water rights are the stuff of hot debate. An that debate is probably going to get hotter. The Colorado River, for instance, no longer runs to the sea. Heavy use of the river as an irrigation source has desiccated the lower course of the river. The Rio Grande is also in danger of becoming extinct. While climate change predictions say evaporation of soil moisture should increase in already dry areas. That's not a good thing. Population growth is already putting pressure on existing water resources in some Western and Midwestern states, as home owners, agriculture and industry compete for water. As population grows, more people means more water requirements.