Firm touts low-water shale recovery

Oil and water may not mix, but getting one requires the other.

Utah is located in an arid desert environment. There's also oodles of oil in the eastern part of the state in shale and tar sands. To get the oil out, it will require using a lot of water.

How much water it will take depends on whom you ask, what technology is being used and how that technology advances in the years leading up to commercial-scale production in parts of Utah, Colorado and Wyoming.

At stake in the shale game is about 800 billion barrels of "recoverable" oil in a formation that spans three states. One recent estimate put the possible start of commercial oil production from shale and sands as soon as 2015. But getting that much oil out of the tri-state Green River formation may require up to 425,000 acre-feet of water per year.

Funded to the tune of up to $250 million by GE Energy Financial Services, a Midway-based company called 212 Resources claims it can "dramatically" reduce the amount of water that a shale or sands operation will need with a technology 212 says it has already proven in commercial natural gas fields. The company's process of recycling dirty water, using a mobile "pod" at the drilling or mining site, is described by 212's Robert Waits as a "viable, large-scale solution to the 'water issue."'

Any number of companies could end up using 212's technology, which Waits said was pitched recently in Alberta, home to rich supplies of oil sands. It's also being used in Wyoming's natural gas fields.

"We wanted to prove ourselves in gas fields," Waits said. "We've set about doing a good job on that."

Waits said one of his company's mobile pods can be built in about six months and that it requires a generator, with some emissions if the site is remote or doesn't have easy access to an electric grid. Beyond that, he added, there are no emissions from 212's "closed-loop" process of heating used water, which creates distilled water and a salty solid waste that Waits said can be injected deep underground and safely away from aquifers. Their process also produces a petroleum product that 212 turns around and sells.

"We're substantially reducing anything that has to be disposed of," Waits said, noting that their methods also greatly reduce the need for water trucks, thereby reducing tailpipe emissions and airborne particulates from dust on dirt roads.

Not everyone is convinced that oil shale can be mined without using lots of water, however.

"Do we have a technology that exists today that does not require a lot of water?" asked Lawson LeGate, senior regional representative of the Sierra Club's Utah chapter. He hasn't seen it, yet.