By Rob Chrisman
At B3, we’re obsessed with water and data and it’s easy to find interesting topics with so much going on in the oil and gas industry. However, high-level discussions on seismicity, ESG, disposal capacity, and market developments can be challenging to connect to the minutiae of daily water management.
We’re switching gears to talk about how OilfieldH2O helps our users every day – from water disposal to business development to regulatory action – especially as we release analytics-ready data and cool new features on OilfieldH2O.
Big Data Versus Big Insights
People are drowning in data but starving for analytics. The datasets we leverage at B3 are compelling, but some may be hard to understand without additional context. A lot of the public data that is integrated into B3 products is inscrutable and essentially unusable without the restructuring and cleaning our data team provides. But when you pull these disparate and confusing data sources together, they fit together like puzzle pieces to provide the intuitively structured and visualized data, analytics, and insights of value to our customers. For example, a heat map of recent seismic activity is informative, but it becomes extremely interesting to analyze when you overlay a heat map of cumulative injection volume from deep injection wells. This sort of dynamic visualization using multiple big datasets helps you find the big insights you need.
Securing development plans with E&P Water Disposal
If you’re an E&P company with new development acreage or acreage that’s been impacted by the recent SRAs in TX and NM, it’s imperative to know what your nearby disposal options look like to ensure your water has a place to go. Existing options take hours to locate wells in the area, find data for those wells, and complete calculations to find a utilization rate, all while hoping the data are accurate and the calculations are correct (our Glass Half Full article describes how difficult it is to accurately assess well capacity). B3 has developed a method using historical and permitted data to estimate operational capacity. The newly integrated operational capacity empowers users to quickly sort for and find wells with truly available excess capacity. Alternatively, development wells with orphaned water (because of the recent SRAs) can quickly identify disposal wells with available capacity enabling drilling plans to proceed uninterrupted.
Business Development, Free Market Water, & Parent Companies
Switching our hats from E&P to SWD operators, OilfieldH2O helps establish new business potential by finding production sites that are related to many different SWDs and operators. In other words, they have “free market water” volumes open to contracts and available for business. Water coming from these production sites is not bound to a dedicated contract with a particular water manager. These dedications are proprietary documents, but using information from OilfieldH2O, a water manager can infer the existence of water contracted to their competitors. This information allows a business development manager to make more accurate business plans and identify real opportunities, increasing the chance of growth success.
Additionally, our work clarifying primary-holding-subsidiary company relationships allows an operator to know exactly which of their competitors has previously taken water from a production site. Understanding the intricacies of company ownership would previously have required a specialized consultant and an expensive contract but can now be accomplished with a few clicks. In many cases, tracing the relationships between companies and related entities can take months of slow progress and cost around $1.5 USD per entity connection. That may not sound terrible but when you estimate that there were, by our estimates, around 10,000 connections to be made to clarify Permian operations, it can add up quickly.
As wells are shut in because of seismicity regulations or other market forces, water management companies will need to develop new disposal wells on other acreage or create additional capacity in existing SWDs. Understanding the well permit information in conjunction with the well completion details is key to understanding where potential capacity exists. Previously, understanding the permitting trends in shallow versus deep wells required a user to download disparate datasets and hand-sort through the information to connect that data to permitting records – plus users have to know where to find that information in the first place! SWD operators can identify areas where shallow or deep wells are actually being approved using the well depth classifications (based on state-agency guidelines) and permitting trends data. Then, to take it to the next level, users can apply the land ownership datasets integrated on OilfieldH2O to evaluate development needs for a water pipeline. All in all, many of the previously time-consuming steps used to evaluate a development site can now be done in a few quick workflows with the highest quality water data available in the market today. What previously cost weeks’ worth of work can now be performed in a few hours.
Regulatory Pressure
The water management regulatory environment is ever evolving and it can be difficult for businesses to keep pace. To stay on the leading edge of our industry, users can leverage OilfieldH2O’s CAM feature (Custom Activity Monitor) and have information on seismic events or permitting activity in an area of interest delivered directly to your inbox within hours of publication. This reduces manual monitoring and reliance on days-old information and updates you with direct, automated notifications. These CAM notifications are much quicker than word of mouth and can ensure that operators have the maximum amount of time to address and respond to a situation like an earthquake near your well or a few new disposal well permits in your development acreage. This extra time gives operators the chance to gather as much information as possible, develop a more comprehensive plan of response to the event, and extra opportunity to find the most positive bottom-line impact for their business.
Empowering Smart Water Management
B3 Insight is building the definitive source for water data. We empower smart water management with data-driven intelligence for responsible and profitable decisions about water resources. Whatever your needs, B3 Insight’s OilfieldH2O can positively impact your water management and drilling completions – contact us at [email protected] or 720-664-8517 to learn more.
