Shale oil production and groundwater: What can we learn from produced water data?

As oil production in the Permian Basin surges, the impact of shale production on groundwater resources has become a growing concern. Most existing studies focus on the impact of shale production on shallow freshwater aquifers. There is little understanding of the shale development’s impact on other groundwater resources (e.g., deep carbonate aquifers and deep basin meteoric aquifers). The possible natural hydraulic connections between shallow aquifers and formation water suggest such an impact can be consequential. This study explores the relationship between shale production and groundwater using produced water (PW) samples from active unconventional oil wells. Focusing on the most productive portion of the Permian Basin—the four-county region in Southeast New Mexico between 2007 and 2016, a large produced water dataset allows us to analyze the conditional correlations between shale oil production and PW constituents. The results suggest that (1) expanding from primarily conventional wells to unconventional wells during the recent shale boom has led to dramatic increases of the TDS, chloride, sodium, and calcium levels in groundwater (i.e., producing formation). (2) Nearby oil well density positively correlates with the TDS, chloride, and sodium levels in the PW samples.