[texbirds] Re: Drought and no rivers,
- From: Stephen Gast <segast23@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: "spkelley@xxxxxxxxx" <spkelley@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 12 Sep 2013 11:17:06 -0700 (PDT)
This is beginning to go seriously off-topic from Texbirds charter, but I will
post one factual accounting and then go offline if anyone wants to discuss
further, they can e-mail me directly. I have researched water usage in Texas
and have come up with the following data from public sources - my sources are
given in each case.
 -  8,388 new oil and gas wells
completed in 2011 in Texas (Texas Railroad Commission Data) There were 15,060
wells drilled in 2012 but I didnât find water data for 2012.
- Approximately 41 billion gallons of water used in
completion of the these wells using an average of 5,000,000 gallons per well
if every well was a fracked well (which a significant number were not) (average
water usage from Frac Focus website)
- This gives a conservative (over-estimated) total usage of
128,800 acre feet of water (conversion factor of 325,851 gal/acre-ft)
Â
From the Texas Water Development Board - 2011 statewide
water use statistics in acre-feet
25,674,681 Private/public
11,082,577 Irrigation
  4,866,918 Municipal/government
  1,098,095 Manufacturing
     472,097 Electric power generation
    311,703 Livestock
    267,400 Mining (includes fracking as well
as all other mining operations) (equals 87 billion gals.) Â Of these acre-feet
155,475 a/f was from
subsurface (water wells/aquifers), and 111,927 a/f from surface sources.
A lot of the frac drilling in Texas (maybe 2/3rds or more) is
in dry regions with little or no surface water, so typically water wells are
drilled if necessary (although water is trucked a lot also). My contacts in the
oil industry
say that ranchers like the companies to drill water wells since after the
companies finish drilling and fracking the oil/gas wells, then they have a
free water well for their livestock or irrigation purposes. Â This could be
seen as enabling expanded
aquifer drainage, but no rancher will refuse a free water well in this current
climate.
Â
Steve Gast
Houston, Texas
segast23@xxxxxxxxx
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