Fuel Switching Can Save Water - Freshwater Use for Coal Vs. Natural Gas Extraction, Power Generation

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emily is coming here
00:00:11.380 00:00:11.390 wrong
00:00:13.070 00:00:13.080 and she's going to to talk about some of
00:00:17.750 00:00:17.760 her research she gave up university of
00:00:19.760 00:00:19.770 texas at austin her research focuses on
00:00:23.720 00:00:23.730 sort of the nexus between energy and
00:00:26.450 00:00:26.460 water away missions in extractive
00:00:29.179 00:00:29.189 industries from working a number of
00:00:31.609 00:00:31.619 areas including July and she was kind
00:00:35.750 00:00:35.760 enough to travel several thousand miles
00:00:37.900 00:00:37.910 talk to us today about water use
00:00:42.890 00:00:42.900 associated with coal mine and natural
00:00:45.680 00:00:45.690 gas production is a very interesting
00:00:47.390 00:00:47.400 pair of study down into Texas so Emily
00:00:52.640 00:00:52.650 thank you so in part because I think
00:00:57.170 00:00:57.180 that there are a number of different
00:00:58.969 00:00:58.979 pieces of this work that I'd like to
00:01:00.740 00:01:00.750 talk about a little bit today if there's
00:01:02.180 00:01:02.190 any point at which you have questions or
00:01:03.649 00:01:03.659 just want to stop and call out something
00:01:05.240 00:01:05.250 please do i hope this can be a little
00:01:06.800 00:01:06.810 bit conversational and if there are
00:01:09.080 00:01:09.090 places where people want to focus more
00:01:10.490 00:01:10.500 than others stop me we can spend some
00:01:12.140 00:01:12.150 more time there but as Jim said I I did
00:01:14.750 00:01:14.760 a lot of work over the last few years on
00:01:16.730 00:01:16.740 electricity fuel cycles and how they
00:01:18.590 00:01:18.600 affect water consumption in particular I
00:01:20.630 00:01:20.640 think in part because in a lot of cases
00:01:23.090 00:01:23.100 the extraction site hasn't been studied
00:01:24.800 00:01:24.810 as much what we really tried to focus on
00:01:27.290 00:01:27.300 in this work was extraction in addition
00:01:30.830 00:01:30.840 to some of the power plant Stefan's I'll
00:01:32.330 00:01:32.340 explain that a little bit more in a
00:01:33.680 00:01:33.690 minute but yeah basically just going to
00:01:35.420 00:01:35.430 be comparing the natural gas and the
00:01:37.370 00:01:37.380 coal-fired electricity fuel cycles in
00:01:39.980 00:01:39.990 Texas I'll get to why Texas in a little
00:01:42.830 00:01:42.840 minute not just because I'm from UT so
00:01:46.310 00:01:46.320 what I'm going to talk about today in
00:01:48.020 00:01:48.030 part why water consumption in the fossil
00:01:50.330 00:01:50.340 fuel industry is actually interesting
00:01:51.950 00:01:51.960 and I think that this gets overlooked
00:01:54.230 00:01:54.240 probably less here because the Marcellus
00:01:56.390 00:01:56.400 is so close by and so I think probably
00:01:58.550 00:01:58.560 there's more talk about it here then
00:02:00.170 00:02:00.180 there might be somewhere else and so I'm
00:02:02.630 00:02:02.640 going to start there then talk about how
00:02:03.980 00:02:03.990 we define the boundaries for this life
00:02:05.360 00:02:05.370 cycle analysis because as anyone who's
00:02:07.730 00:02:07.740 ever tried a life cycle analysis before
00:02:09.380 00:02:09.390 probably knows very very deeply it's
00:02:13.160 00:02:13.170 hard to define where you're going to
00:02:14.270 00:02:14.280 stop in this case we got kind of lucky
00:02:15.979 00:02:15.989 and just defined our boundaries pretty
00:02:17.509 00:02:17.519 much at the state line which was helpful
00:02:19.280 00:02:19.290 but I'll get into that a little bit more
00:02:21.080 00:02:21.090 later then I'll go into a bit about what
00:02:22.970 00:02:22.980 we actually found from extraction power
00:02:25.970 00:02:25.980 plant cooling
00:02:26.840 00:02:26.850 controls etc down in Texas and explain
00:02:29.120 00:02:29.130 why I think this is interesting and what
00:02:30.890 00:02:30.900 it might mean outside of Texas so first
00:02:34.640 00:02:34.650 of all just this is a way that I think
00:02:36.440 00:02:36.450 about this a little bit just in terms of
00:02:38.750 00:02:38.760 how the energy industry uses water so
00:02:40.520 00:02:40.530 there's quantity issues and quality
00:02:41.780 00:02:41.790 issues just in terms of what you're
00:02:43.040 00:02:43.050 using you are taking some amount of
00:02:44.990 00:02:45.000 water and consuming it you are taking
00:02:46.730 00:02:46.740 some amount of water and changing its
00:02:48.140 00:02:48.150 quality perhaps and then there's also
00:02:49.520 00:02:49.530 this element of adequacy that affects
00:02:51.050 00:02:51.060 both of those so do you have adequate
00:02:52.760 00:02:52.770 quantity to do what you want to do and
00:02:54.350 00:02:54.360 not have a major impact do you have
00:02:55.670 00:02:55.680 adequate quality that kind of thing so
00:02:57.890 00:02:57.900 what I'm focusing on today is quantity
00:02:59.960 00:02:59.970 but i just wanted to start off
00:03:01.190 00:03:01.200 mentioning that that's not the only
00:03:02.990 00:03:03.000 issue here and just to point out that
00:03:05.570 00:03:05.580 the study does not address things like
00:03:07.490 00:03:07.500 quality issues inadequacy issues all
00:03:09.560 00:03:09.570 that directly so why i think this is
00:03:14.000 00:03:14.010 interesting the water and energy
00:03:15.290 00:03:15.300 relationship that we see in the united
00:03:17.270 00:03:17.280 states and really all over the world is
00:03:18.860 00:03:18.870 changing fairly rapidly for a number of
00:03:20.750 00:03:20.760 big reasons some of the macro trends we
00:03:22.850 00:03:22.860 see of course our climate change big
00:03:24.680 00:03:24.690 widespread droughts and that's something
00:03:26.450 00:03:26.460 that we felt very very deeply in Texas
00:03:28.580 00:03:28.590 over the last few years actually while I
00:03:30.590 00:03:30.600 was writing this paper I had put a
00:03:32.630 00:03:32.640 placeholder for the amount of Texas that
00:03:34.700 00:03:34.710 had experienced severe drought in 2010
00:03:37.600 00:03:37.610 expecting the answer to be somewhere
00:03:39.440 00:03:39.450 around ninety percent the real answer
00:03:41.960 00:03:41.970 was a hundred percent so drought is a
00:03:43.850 00:03:43.860 big issue down there and increasingly
00:03:45.410 00:03:45.420 across the rest of the world um and then
00:03:48.320 00:03:48.330 also just the trend in the u.s.
00:03:50.630 00:03:50.640 particularly that is a long-term trend
00:03:53.270 00:03:53.280 really of natural gas and coal being
00:03:54.650 00:03:54.660 very dominant fuels in the electricity
00:03:56.060 00:03:56.070 production sector some of the more
00:03:58.460 00:03:58.470 recent changes and some of the things
00:04:00.110 00:04:00.120 that are a little bit more localized are
00:04:01.910 00:04:01.920 things like the rise of hydraulic
00:04:03.530 00:04:03.540 fracturing so the impact of energy use
00:04:06.500 00:04:06.510 on water has changed a lot since we
00:04:08.090 00:04:08.100 started fracking wells something else
00:04:10.370 00:04:10.380 being aging power plant infrastructure
00:04:12.350 00:04:12.360 so older plants tend to be less
00:04:14.600 00:04:14.610 efficient and also get less efficient as
00:04:16.550 00:04:16.560 they age so that can have big impacts on
00:04:19.729 00:04:19.739 cooling and stuff like that and also
00:04:21.770 00:04:21.780 changing power market structures so in
00:04:23.720 00:04:23.730 Texas in particular what we have is
00:04:25.490 00:04:25.500 competitive markets which means a lot of
00:04:27.320 00:04:27.330 the time you can't rely on just saying
00:04:28.970 00:04:28.980 statewide these plants are your base
00:04:30.470 00:04:30.480 load plants that are going to run all
00:04:31.760 00:04:31.770 the time and be efficient all the time
00:04:33.260 00:04:33.270 and these plants are your peakers and we
00:04:34.730 00:04:34.740 know that we design them to be that way
00:04:36.800 00:04:36.810 what you see increasingly is that plants
00:04:38.870 00:04:38.880 are called to operate in ways that they
00:04:40.219 00:04:40.229 might not
00:04:40.770 00:04:40.780 designed to do and so that can affect
00:04:42.480 00:04:42.490 the way that they use water both on the
00:04:44.700 00:04:44.710 emissions control side and on the
00:04:45.780 00:04:45.790 cooling site actually than the data why
00:04:49.379 00:04:49.389 this is interesting to study i think is
00:04:51.030 00:04:51.040 because the water and energy
00:04:52.110 00:04:52.120 relationship is really pretty under
00:04:53.760 00:04:53.770 characterised that's changed a bit but
00:04:56.040 00:04:56.050 really when you look at a lot of the
00:04:57.420 00:04:57.430 recent work even that has been published
00:04:59.159 00:04:59.169 over the last few years you keep coming
00:05:01.050 00:05:01.060 back to this one citation from 1994 and
00:05:03.450 00:05:03.460 that's really what we know about water
00:05:05.970 00:05:05.980 and extraction in particular some of the
00:05:08.159 00:05:08.169 data on power plant water use and stuff
00:05:09.930 00:05:09.940 is a bit newer but really there's not a
00:05:11.850 00:05:11.860 lot of work done in water there's great
00:05:13.409 00:05:13.419 work done in air emissions there's great
00:05:14.940 00:05:14.950 work done in waste stuff like that
00:05:16.710 00:05:16.720 although that's developing as well but
00:05:18.510 00:05:18.520 water I think tends to be particularly
00:05:19.920 00:05:19.930 under characterized part of the reason
00:05:21.960 00:05:21.970 we didn't look at quality in this paper
00:05:23.340 00:05:23.350 is because that is so under call under
00:05:25.560 00:05:25.570 characterize that we couldn't really
00:05:26.700 00:05:26.710 even get it good data that we felt
00:05:28.200 00:05:28.210 comfortable using in a publication so to
00:05:33.659 00:05:33.669 kind of explain what I'm going to be
00:05:36.000 00:05:36.010 talking about when I say fuel cycle what
00:05:38.879 00:05:38.889 we really looked at from the electricity
00:05:40.500 00:05:40.510 perspective is three major stages during
00:05:42.360 00:05:42.370 the life of a kilowatt hour so there's
00:05:45.420 00:05:45.430 the extraction stage where you get your
00:05:46.920 00:05:46.930 in this case your choler natural gas you
00:05:49.710 00:05:49.720 move on to power generation where your
00:05:51.210 00:05:51.220 big impact on water tends to be cooling
00:05:52.950 00:05:52.960 and then on the back end you tend to
00:05:54.360 00:05:54.370 have emissions controls that's less
00:05:55.860 00:05:55.870 common in the natural gas fuel cycle but
00:05:57.630 00:05:57.640 for for completeness it could start to
00:06:01.170 00:06:01.180 be more prevalent there especially as we
00:06:02.700 00:06:02.710 get into carbon capture we go into that
00:06:04.170 00:06:04.180 a little bit more later but I think some
00:06:05.909 00:06:05.919 of the interesting things to note here
00:06:07.680 00:06:07.690 are that on the extraction side what you
00:06:10.380 00:06:10.390 really have is a bifurcation between
00:06:12.750 00:06:12.760 natural gas and coal in that with
00:06:14.310 00:06:14.320 natural gas when you use water you put
00:06:16.170 00:06:16.180 it down whole you keep it down there use
00:06:18.210 00:06:18.220 it as drilling mud you drill you use it
00:06:20.040 00:06:20.050 as frack fluid stuff like that you
00:06:22.440 00:06:22.450 produce some of it but ultimately you
00:06:24.180 00:06:24.190 are putting water into the system to get
00:06:25.770 00:06:25.780 gas out on the coal side and realizing
00:06:28.800 00:06:28.810 that this is a Texas context so I'm
00:06:30.240 00:06:30.250 talking about surface mining and surface
00:06:32.070 00:06:32.080 mining particularly in aquifers really
00:06:34.950 00:06:34.960 what you have to do is take water out of
00:06:36.150 00:06:36.160 the system so in an ideal world you'd be
00:06:38.430 00:06:38.440 using pretty much no water at all but
00:06:40.110 00:06:40.120 because you need to keep your coal face
00:06:41.400 00:06:41.410 dry you have to pump a lot of water out
00:06:44.010 00:06:44.020 of these systems before you can get at
00:06:45.480 00:06:45.490 your coal and that has some impacts on
00:06:47.100 00:06:47.110 how you use water outside of that I'm
00:06:49.050 00:06:49.060 and also on the cold side although this
00:06:51.450 00:06:51.460 is something that is a little bit less
00:06:52.980 00:06:52.990 important right
00:06:54.239 00:06:54.249 now in a lot of areas where mining is
00:06:55.889 00:06:55.899 ongoing revegetation so putting the
00:06:58.799 00:06:58.809 trees in the fields and whatever it was
00:07:00.359 00:07:00.369 that was on top of the coal mine before
00:07:01.559 00:07:01.569 you started mining back on there can
00:07:03.179 00:07:03.189 take a lot of water because
00:07:04.259 00:07:04.269 reestablishing plants and stuff like
00:07:05.789 00:07:05.799 that I'm sure you both had gardens where
00:07:09.389 00:07:09.399 you stopped watering your point for a
00:07:10.589 00:07:10.599 little while and it died same thing
00:07:11.939 00:07:11.949 happens on top of coal mines and that
00:07:13.319 00:07:13.329 turns out to be a huge water usage
00:07:14.789 00:07:14.799 actually didn't go into that here
00:07:16.349 00:07:16.359 because most of the Texas mines haven't
00:07:17.879 00:07:17.889 been shut down yet but just to note that
00:07:20.189 00:07:20.199 that's an issue in both cases for power
00:07:22.919 00:07:22.929 generation we're really talking about
00:07:24.269 00:07:24.279 cooling in terms of water use on the
00:07:26.909 00:07:26.919 extraction on the emissions side rather
00:07:28.619 00:07:28.629 for coal what I'm going to talk about
00:07:30.809 00:07:30.819 today is the sulphur controls so flue
00:07:33.269 00:07:33.279 gas scrubbers and things like that some
00:07:35.219 00:07:35.229 of the other controls that you might see
00:07:36.629 00:07:36.639 for particulates or NOx and things like
00:07:38.489 00:07:38.499 that don't really use water so they're
00:07:39.959 00:07:39.969 excluded here just to give you a sense
00:07:41.489 00:07:41.499 of what we're talking about so on the
00:07:46.019 00:07:46.029 defining the boundaries point a couple
00:07:48.299 00:07:48.309 issues to talk about here when we were
00:07:49.979 00:07:49.989 trying to figure out how to do this life
00:07:51.209 00:07:51.219 cycle analysis looking at Texas in
00:07:53.669 00:07:53.679 particular because that's where we had
00:07:55.109 00:07:55.119 good data we decided that we wanted to
00:07:58.589 00:07:58.599 look basically at the water consumption
00:08:00.629 00:08:00.639 that was occurring within the state so
00:08:02.219 00:08:02.229 from a geographic perspective defining
00:08:05.249 00:08:05.259 that state boundary was an easy step
00:08:08.549 00:08:08.559 defining what exactly felt into that
00:08:10.469 00:08:10.479 state boundary was a little harder so
00:08:12.779 00:08:12.789 this graph kind of shows a little bit of
00:08:16.439 00:08:16.449 what I'm talking about in that we
00:08:18.839 00:08:18.849 decided to include all gas and coal that
00:08:20.999 00:08:21.009 was extracted within the state that was
00:08:22.889 00:08:22.899 used within the state for power
00:08:23.999 00:08:24.009 generation so this excludes some of the
00:08:26.129 00:08:26.139 gas that gets exported for example and
00:08:27.959 00:08:27.969 it also excludes a lot of the coal that
00:08:29.549 00:08:29.559 gets imported Texas imports about
00:08:31.769 00:08:31.779 two-thirds of its cold turns out that
00:08:33.209 00:08:33.219 that coal which is coming from Wyoming
00:08:34.889 00:08:34.899 doesn't use a lot of water so it's not a
00:08:36.360 00:08:36.370 huge analytical detail to omit it that
00:08:39.029 00:08:39.039 said it's still something that we did
00:08:40.679 00:08:40.689 emit then looking a little bit more
00:08:42.959 00:08:42.969 closely at some of these boxes on the
00:08:44.850 00:08:44.860 extraction side we included dewatering
00:08:47.009 00:08:47.019 in other mine uses like that for the
00:08:49.139 00:08:49.149 coal on the gas side we look not only at
00:08:52.350 00:08:52.360 drilling mud and frack fluid but also at
00:08:54.749 00:08:54.759 the embedded water in province and
00:08:56.160 00:08:56.170 chemicals we had to make a few
00:08:57.509 00:08:57.519 assumptions on that side and we can talk
00:08:59.100 00:08:59.110 more about that offline or during this
00:09:00.600 00:09:00.610 whatever people have appetite for but
00:09:02.759 00:09:02.769 that was probably one of the more
00:09:03.929 00:09:03.939 interesting things we did because we had
00:09:05.429 00:09:05.439 to go off of economic models
00:09:07.530 00:09:07.540 is obviously if you don't really know
00:09:09.509 00:09:09.519 what those chemicals are if you don't
00:09:11.310 00:09:11.320 know whether you're using manufactured
00:09:12.840 00:09:12.850 proppant or sand it's hard to tell what
00:09:15.689 00:09:15.699 kind of water is actually embedded into
00:09:17.100 00:09:17.110 those systems but we made an attempt we
00:09:19.439 00:09:19.449 excluded transportation so train
00:09:22.019 00:09:22.029 transportation pipeline transportation
00:09:23.249 00:09:23.259 because it's really not a big water use
00:09:25.199 00:09:25.209 and the at this high level it didn't
00:09:29.850 00:09:29.860 make a big difference we did a little
00:09:31.079 00:09:31.089 bit of sensitivity and ultimately
00:09:32.490 00:09:32.500 decided to exclude it and then
00:09:34.710 00:09:34.720 downstream we included cooling and on
00:09:37.199 00:09:37.209 the emissions control side both the
00:09:38.610 00:09:38.620 direct water use for flue gas scrubbing
00:09:40.230 00:09:40.240 and the water that's embedded in
00:09:41.460 00:09:41.470 limestone and stuff like that that
00:09:42.540 00:09:42.550 you're actually using in the scrubber so
00:09:43.980 00:09:43.990 when you mind limestone to then put into
00:09:45.809 00:09:45.819 your scrubber you use some water much
00:09:47.670 00:09:47.680 the same way you use it Nicole mine
00:09:48.900 00:09:48.910 actually it's largely dewatering and
00:09:50.370 00:09:50.380 storm water removal so basically
00:09:53.370 00:09:53.380 included extraction cooling water and
00:09:56.009 00:09:56.019 emissions controls with a couple of
00:09:57.629 00:09:57.639 indirect effects of chemicals and
00:09:59.249 00:09:59.259 province and sulphur scrubbing materials
00:10:04.160 00:10:04.170 so just to give a quick overview again
00:10:08.480 00:10:08.490 what we looked at on the extraction side
00:10:11.400 00:10:11.410 was 11 specific unconventional gas
00:10:13.710 00:10:13.720 basins and then conventional gas we
00:10:15.840 00:10:15.850 didn't look at offshore but we look
00:10:17.819 00:10:17.829 basically at what you might use for a
00:10:20.309 00:10:20.319 conventional well that is not fracked
00:10:21.600 00:10:21.610 and then what you went used for an
00:10:23.040 00:10:23.050 unconventional well that is fracked in
00:10:24.660 00:10:24.670 11 separate situations on the cool side
00:10:28.879 00:10:28.889 what we looked at was the dewatering and
00:10:31.769 00:10:31.779 then also the other mine uses so to kind
00:10:33.480 00:10:33.490 of give you a sense of what the
00:10:34.620 00:10:34.630 dewatering use is if you've got this
00:10:37.530 00:10:37.540 coal mine this kind of trapezoidal shape
00:10:40.350 00:10:40.360 in order to keep it dry wherever you're
00:10:42.689 00:10:42.699 mining you need to pump a lot of water
00:10:44.160 00:10:44.170 out that tends to form what's called a
00:10:45.540 00:10:45.550 cone of depression so you take out a lot
00:10:47.189 00:10:47.199 more water than just the volume of the
00:10:48.689 00:10:48.699 mine that varies by geology etc and in
00:10:52.019 00:10:52.029 Texas this is a somewhat controversial
00:10:55.280 00:10:55.290 definition perhaps but the Texas Water
00:10:57.540 00:10:57.550 Development Board defines all of that
00:10:59.009 00:10:59.019 water as consumptive this is
00:11:01.319 00:11:01.329 controversial because when you think
00:11:03.360 00:11:03.370 about coal it's a lot like a Brita Brita
00:11:05.699 00:11:05.709 filter for water so a lot of the time
00:11:07.499 00:11:07.509 the water that you're actually pumping
00:11:08.550 00:11:08.560 out of these mines is quite clean unlike
00:11:10.499 00:11:10.509 the water that you might put down a gas
00:11:11.819 00:11:11.829 well or something like that so although
00:11:13.199 00:11:13.209 you are taking it out of the mind and
00:11:15.210 00:11:15.220 then discharging it somewhere and though
00:11:17.970 00:11:17.980 that is considered consumption it's a
00:11:19.559 00:11:19.569 very different type of consumption than
00:11:21.330 00:11:21.340 you might see on the gas side so even
00:11:23.850 00:11:23.860 though this is counted as consumed it's
00:11:25.410 00:11:25.420 still contributing to stream water flow
00:11:27.570 00:11:27.580 that kind of thing so just to call that
00:11:29.610 00:11:29.620 out a little bit it's pretty clean water
00:11:31.020 00:11:31.030 that's coming out of these minds but
00:11:33.240 00:11:33.250 that said it does draw down aquifers and
00:11:35.280 00:11:35.290 that can be a big deal in this state
00:11:36.810 00:11:36.820 like Texas where drought is so
00:11:37.950 00:11:37.960 significant that if you are ultimately
00:11:40.350 00:11:40.360 discharging that water into the Gulf
00:11:41.850 00:11:41.860 you're not going to get it back and that
00:11:43.920 00:11:43.930 can be a pretty big problem for you yeah
00:11:47.720 00:11:47.730 I'm sure we'll get to this waiting yeah
00:11:50.670 00:11:50.680 you just don't reject coal so you would
00:11:53.460 00:11:53.470 cold water that you extracted no it
00:11:54.960 00:11:54.970 doesn't make all that much sense just
00:11:56.280 00:11:56.290 because the mines are small enough in a
00:11:59.220 00:11:59.230 small enough user that it's not a huge
00:12:01.320 00:12:01.330 deal and so since they've been there for
00:12:02.880 00:12:02.890 quite a while they've kind of gotten
00:12:04.290 00:12:04.300 used to discharging and it does
00:12:05.610 00:12:05.620 contribute to stream flow there probably
00:12:07.050 00:12:07.060 is some downstream use but where that's
00:12:08.670 00:12:08.680 not specifically called out it's
00:12:10.650 00:12:10.660 considered consumption so yeah the
00:12:13.350 00:12:13.360 rejection poses a bit of a problem
00:12:15.300 00:12:15.310 because you'd be flooding your mind
00:12:16.380 00:12:16.390 again because they're shallow and every
00:12:17.700 00:12:17.710 day yeah Texas is pretty flat though but
00:12:22.230 00:12:22.240 yeah yeah I think this is this is again
00:12:25.560 00:12:25.570 why I keep mentioning Texas Texas Texas
00:12:27.660 00:12:27.670 because in a lot of the coal mines on
00:12:28.950 00:12:28.960 this side of the on the side of the
00:12:30.390 00:12:30.400 world like in the Appalachian you would
00:12:32.040 00:12:32.050 not have these same problems so the
00:12:34.590 00:12:34.600 Texas mines in particular are unusual in
00:12:37.290 00:12:37.300 their shallowness their lignite mines
00:12:39.030 00:12:39.040 and so they're basically still very
00:12:41.490 00:12:41.500 close to the time at which they were
00:12:42.660 00:12:42.670 swamps so there's a lot of water in
00:12:45.450 00:12:45.460 there you get the same thing up in North
00:12:46.890 00:12:46.900 Dakota less so in other basins on the
00:12:50.310 00:12:50.320 cooling side what's kind of interesting
00:12:51.660 00:12:51.670 is that we were comparing natural gas
00:12:53.340 00:12:53.350 combined cycle plants with pulverized
00:12:54.570 00:12:54.580 coal plants just because that's kind of
00:12:56.160 00:12:56.170 what you see on base Linda baseload
00:12:59.400 00:12:59.410 comparisons down in Texas and I think
00:13:00.990 00:13:01.000 that's fairly true in most of the United
00:13:02.670 00:13:02.680 States at least what we ended up seeing
00:13:05.430 00:13:05.440 was that you get a huge advantage on
00:13:07.050 00:13:07.060 cooling water needs in NGC sees vs.
00:13:09.360 00:13:09.370 pulverized coal plants not just because
00:13:10.920 00:13:10.930 they're a lot more efficient typically
00:13:12.420 00:13:12.430 but because they're partially air-cooled
00:13:13.740 00:13:13.750 so the combined cycle bit you've got a
00:13:16.080 00:13:16.090 gas turbine and then a steam turbine the
00:13:18.090 00:13:18.100 gas turbine parts air-cooled so you're
00:13:19.620 00:13:19.630 not using any water and then the steam
00:13:21.510 00:13:21.520 turbine part is cooled with water much
00:13:23.400 00:13:23.410 like a coal plant the entire coal plant
00:13:25.620 00:13:25.630 is being cooled with water to bring this
00:13:29.100 00:13:29.110 a little bit farther is kind of a side
00:13:30.570 00:13:30.580 note typically you see natural gas-fired
00:13:32.640 00:13:32.650 power plants combined cycles use the
00:13:34.500 00:13:34.510 least amount of water
00:13:35.330 00:13:35.340 of the water cold ones then coal plants
00:13:38.330 00:13:38.340 because they use some water to cool and
00:13:39.980 00:13:39.990 emit some of their heat to the
00:13:41.270 00:13:41.280 atmosphere and then nuclear plants use
00:13:43.040 00:13:43.050 the most because none of that heat is
00:13:44.240 00:13:44.250 going to atmosphere for obvious reasons
00:13:46.610 00:13:46.620 so you need a lot more water to cool
00:13:47.930 00:13:47.940 them so interesting side note at least
00:13:50.510 00:13:50.520 to me but we do see that effect pretty
00:13:53.090 00:13:53.100 strongly and so if we were comparing for
00:13:54.860 00:13:54.870 example I GCC's so integrated
00:13:56.930 00:13:56.940 gasification combined cycle coal plants
00:13:58.640 00:13:58.650 with ng CCS we probably would have seen
00:14:00.650 00:14:00.660 less disparity between the cooling uses
00:14:02.420 00:14:02.430 I'll get that to it get to that in a
00:14:04.010 00:14:04.020 minute but because those aren't actually
00:14:05.890 00:14:05.900 really used we decided to go off of
00:14:09.050 00:14:09.060 existing existing types of power plants
00:14:11.000 00:14:11.010 and then on the scrubber side I alluded
00:14:14.120 00:14:14.130 to this a little bit earlier but basic
00:14:15.680 00:14:15.690 oh this is an animation cool it wasn't
00:14:18.440 00:14:18.450 on my computer exciting but basically
00:14:21.020 00:14:21.030 you've got water that you're blowing
00:14:22.790 00:14:22.800 into this scrubber then you're also
00:14:24.320 00:14:24.330 injecting basically limestone powder and
00:14:27.040 00:14:27.050 pulling out the sulfur by having it
00:14:29.120 00:14:29.130 absorb on to the limestone so you end up
00:14:31.700 00:14:31.710 using water both to extract that
00:14:33.170 00:14:33.180 limestone and to directly cool the wet
00:14:35.630 00:14:35.640 scrubber it is true that there are
00:14:38.330 00:14:38.340 certain plants in Texas that use dry
00:14:40.040 00:14:40.050 scrubbers we took that into account but
00:14:41.720 00:14:41.730 by and large where you're seeing water
00:14:42.860 00:14:42.870 uses for these so in Texas what we found
00:14:50.420 00:14:50.430 was that the natural gas combined cycle
00:14:52.640 00:14:52.650 plants over their fuel cycle in these
00:14:55.040 00:14:55.050 steps that I described and including the
00:14:56.690 00:14:56.700 second-order effects of provence
00:14:57.920 00:14:57.930 chemicals limestone all of that used
00:15:00.050 00:15:00.060 about forty percent as much water per
00:15:01.790 00:15:01.800 kilowatt hour as the pulverized coal
00:15:03.500 00:15:03.510 plants that are currently operating um
00:15:05.230 00:15:05.240 this is based on plant level data we
00:15:07.610 00:15:07.620 actually did have data for each
00:15:09.230 00:15:09.240 pulverized coal plants operating in
00:15:10.970 00:15:10.980 Texas and the average for all the ng CCS
00:15:14.230 00:15:14.240 but just to call this that walk through
00:15:17.450 00:15:17.460 this waterfall a little bit this big
00:15:20.150 00:15:20.160 dark blue color is cooling water so what
00:15:22.610 00:15:22.620 you see here in both fuel cycles
00:15:24.440 00:15:24.450 actually is the cooling water accounts
00:15:25.940 00:15:25.950 for about eighty percent of the water
00:15:27.200 00:15:27.210 that you're consuming ultimately the
00:15:30.260 00:15:30.270 fuel bit which is the next darker bar in
00:15:34.010 00:15:34.020 both cases it counts for between ten and
00:15:37.130 00:15:37.140 twenty percent of the fuel cycle water
00:15:39.440 00:15:39.450 use water consumption and then on the
00:15:42.590 00:15:42.600 coals that you've got a little bit of a
00:15:43.670 00:15:43.680 mission so walking through this starting
00:15:45.980 00:15:45.990 with the PC the pulverized coal plant
00:15:47.810 00:15:47.820 water consumption it's about point
00:15:49.100 00:15:49.110 61 gallons per kilowatt-hour in Texas is
00:15:52.370 00:15:52.380 what we calculated we then calculated
00:15:55.400 00:15:55.410 what that water consumption would be if
00:15:57.440 00:15:57.450 the pulverized coal plant we're running
00:15:58.759 00:15:58.769 at the same heat right as a natural gas
00:16:00.440 00:16:00.450 combined cycle so just to kind of get
00:16:02.540 00:16:02.550 that effect out of the way um and what
00:16:05.540 00:16:05.550 you see is really the efficiency change
00:16:07.160 00:16:07.170 is huge just the fact that natural gas
00:16:08.780 00:16:08.790 plants tend to be more efficient not
00:16:10.310 00:16:10.320 only because they're newer but because
00:16:11.720 00:16:11.730 they're using the fuel twice combined
00:16:13.550 00:16:13.560 cycle thing you get a huge benefit from
00:16:16.780 00:16:16.790 actually all areas just by being a lot
00:16:19.100 00:16:19.110 more efficient you're using less fuel
00:16:20.240 00:16:20.250 you are using more of your heat to turn
00:16:22.550 00:16:22.560 into electricity so you're not having to
00:16:24.019 00:16:24.029 cool it as much all that kind of thing
00:16:25.400 00:16:25.410 so the efficiency boost is huge then
00:16:28.220 00:16:28.230 even on an efficiency parity point
00:16:30.730 00:16:30.740 natural gas combined cycle is use a bit
00:16:32.780 00:16:32.790 less water that's kind of the air
00:16:34.040 00:16:34.050 cooling point that I made earlier the
00:16:36.650 00:16:36.660 really interesting thing to us was that
00:16:38.750 00:16:38.760 on the fuel extraction side natural gas
00:16:41.240 00:16:41.250 plants on an efficiency parity basis use
00:16:43.790 00:16:43.800 a little bit more water for fuel
00:16:45.380 00:16:45.390 extraction than coal plants but not much
00:16:48.370 00:16:48.380 even when you account for the fact that
00:16:50.569 00:16:50.579 there's all this imported coal that
00:16:52.190 00:16:52.200 actually isn't using any water in Texas
00:16:54.319 00:16:54.329 so the the takeaway there is that
00:16:57.500 00:16:57.510 because of the way that lignite minds
00:16:59.150 00:16:59.160 work in Texas and if you assume that
00:17:00.620 00:17:00.630 dewatering is consumption even with the
00:17:03.949 00:17:03.959 impact of hydraulic fracturing and even
00:17:06.289 00:17:06.299 assuming that you get all of your
00:17:07.789 00:17:07.799 two-thirds of your imported coal for
00:17:09.679 00:17:09.689 free for water the gas is not using that
00:17:12.199 00:17:12.209 much more water per unit of energy that
00:17:14.480 00:17:14.490 turns into electricity and then the coal
00:17:16.970 00:17:16.980 and that was a surprise because I think
00:17:19.039 00:17:19.049 we were expecting to see that natural
00:17:21.049 00:17:21.059 gas combined cycle plants we're using a
00:17:22.520 00:17:22.530 lot less water on the cooling side and
00:17:23.870 00:17:23.880 obviously on the emissions side because
00:17:25.220 00:17:25.230 they don't have emissions controls
00:17:26.299 00:17:26.309 typically but to see that even with
00:17:29.000 00:17:29.010 fracking the water consumption for fuel
00:17:31.159 00:17:31.169 is fairly similar was a pretty big
00:17:32.990 00:17:33.000 surprise go into more detail on that in
00:17:34.700 00:17:34.710 a minute then just to finish it up the
00:17:37.280 00:17:37.290 emissions controls you get a boost on
00:17:39.049 00:17:39.059 the gas side because you don't have them
00:17:40.700 00:17:40.710 and then ultimately we get about a
00:17:42.799 00:17:42.809 quarter of a gallon per kilowatt hour
00:17:44.360 00:17:44.370 for a natural gas combined cycle plan
00:17:46.220 00:17:46.230 yeah yeah I know the quality is not was
00:17:48.860 00:17:48.870 not part of the study but yeah for the
00:17:50.690 00:17:50.700 cooling do they do require what are the
00:17:52.610 00:17:52.620 same temperature for both of these
00:17:53.980 00:17:53.990 roughly that's what's saying so Texas
00:17:56.180 00:17:56.190 plants and this is kind of interesting
00:17:57.230 00:17:57.240 because most coastal states and Texas is
00:17:59.540 00:17:59.550 a coastal state and from California and
00:18:01.100 00:18:01.110 had trouble accepting that for a little
00:18:02.570 00:18:02.580 but it is coastal a lot of coastal
00:18:05.149 00:18:05.159 states you see water for power plant
00:18:06.590 00:18:06.600 cooling it's not really true in Texas
00:18:08.389 00:18:08.399 because what you see is that refineries
00:18:10.250 00:18:10.260 take up a lot of the industrial space on
00:18:12.019 00:18:12.029 the coast and so your power plants are
00:18:13.610 00:18:13.620 further inland using strings so yes they
00:18:15.889 00:18:15.899 take about the same temperature put out
00:18:17.360 00:18:17.370 the same temperature they're both using
00:18:18.470 00:18:18.480 river water typically they're a couple
00:18:20.539 00:18:20.549 ground water cool plants but not many
00:18:23.649 00:18:23.659 yeah the confusion so why are you so do
00:18:32.810 00:18:32.820 you do a sensitivity analysis of the of
00:18:34.970 00:18:34.980 the
00:18:37.330 00:18:37.340 yeah a little bit this one we kind of
00:18:42.100 00:18:42.110 took our best guess estimate but so on
00:18:44.260 00:18:44.270 that what we found was that in both
00:18:45.940 00:18:45.950 cases for province and for chemicals it
00:18:48.730 00:18:48.740 was actually surprisingly close for each
00:18:50.320 00:18:50.330 but using some of our economic inputs
00:18:53.560 00:18:53.570 things like that did a lot of digging
00:18:55.450 00:18:55.460 through 10 k's of profit companies um
00:18:57.990 00:18:58.000 you get kind of the amount of water that
00:19:01.570 00:19:01.580 you're using on site for a drill
00:19:02.980 00:19:02.990 drilling situation plus between about
00:19:05.650 00:19:05.660 eight and thirty percent each for the
00:19:07.450 00:19:07.460 chemicals in the province that you're
00:19:08.620 00:19:08.630 using that's the higher level is
00:19:11.230 00:19:11.240 assuming and again because our boundary
00:19:13.120 00:19:13.130 was Texas the higher boundaries assuming
00:19:15.520 00:19:15.530 that everything is manufactured not mind
00:19:17.410 00:19:17.420 because you can mind some province and
00:19:19.090 00:19:19.100 that it's all mind and manufactured in
00:19:21.070 00:19:21.080 Texas so all in I think probably overall
00:19:25.720 00:19:25.730 the province and the chemicals together
00:19:27.250 00:19:27.260 at about sixty percent to the on-site
00:19:28.990 00:19:29.000 water use as the high end about twenty
00:19:31.300 00:19:31.310 percent on the low end so because the
00:19:33.910 00:19:33.920 extraction piece is small enough you
00:19:35.950 00:19:35.960 don't see a huge difference in the
00:19:37.210 00:19:37.220 assumptions that you make at this level
00:19:38.680 00:19:38.690 but when you start going into really
00:19:40.390 00:19:40.400 water used per million btu or something
00:19:43.930 00:19:43.940 like that there's a bit of a change
00:19:45.340 00:19:45.350 there the bigger effect actually is
00:19:47.380 00:19:47.390 which basin you're looking at so I'll
00:19:49.330 00:19:49.340 flip to that slide in just a minute but
00:19:51.150 00:19:51.160 what we found was that between
00:19:53.370 00:19:53.380 unconventional guests across the eleven
00:19:55.720 00:19:55.730 basins that we looked at there was a
00:19:56.890 00:19:56.900 spread of like two or three X depending
00:19:58.660 00:19:58.670 on which base and it was so there's also
00:20:00.850 00:20:00.860 that going on a little bit maybe I will
00:20:04.690 00:20:04.700 actually just start there because they
00:20:06.460 00:20:06.470 think that this might be more
00:20:07.270 00:20:07.280 interesting to talk about given that
00:20:08.560 00:20:08.570 were a little short on time um yeah I
00:20:14.160 00:20:14.170 want lots of questions though and if
00:20:16.240 00:20:16.250 people have to leave I'd love to get to
00:20:17.770 00:20:17.780 those so this is this is actually more
00:20:20.110 00:20:20.120 interesting than the other stuff anyway
00:20:21.520 00:20:21.530 let's just go here um basically this is
00:20:24.730 00:20:24.740 a chart across the 11 unconventional
00:20:26.980 00:20:26.990 basins we looked at conventional gas and
00:20:28.690 00:20:28.700 Texas lignite of how much water per I
00:20:32.140 00:20:32.150 think my unit is gallons per million
00:20:33.730 00:20:33.740 BTUs for each of these energy sources so
00:20:37.150 00:20:37.160 to walk through this little bit this red
00:20:38.920 00:20:38.930 bar is conventional natural gas so
00:20:41.290 00:20:41.300 that's just drilling fluid there's no
00:20:42.880 00:20:42.890 frack fluid associated with that this is
00:20:44.410 00:20:44.420 just the mud that you keep the bit cool
00:20:46.030 00:20:46.040 with that kind of thing um as you step
00:20:50.140 00:20:50.150 through the
00:20:50.710 00:20:50.720 the other basins and I'll point out a
00:20:52.330 00:20:52.340 couple things here in a minute you see
00:20:54.190 00:20:54.200 that on the high end which we determine
00:20:57.399 00:20:57.409 kind of the Barnett in the Haynesville
00:20:58.779 00:20:58.789 we're at the high end of water
00:20:59.799 00:20:59.809 consumption they're using kind of six
00:21:03.070 00:21:03.080 gallons per million btu where's things
00:21:04.990 00:21:05.000 like the anadarko basin in the Eagle
00:21:06.700 00:21:06.710 furder using more like two one of the
00:21:09.490 00:21:09.500 really interesting reasons for that
00:21:11.020 00:21:11.030 besides geologic setting so like the
00:21:13.810 00:21:13.820 Haynesville in particular is in a swampy
00:21:15.310 00:21:15.320 area so you might expect that the the
00:21:18.399 00:21:18.409 rock is actually absorbing a little bit
00:21:19.840 00:21:19.850 more of the water you're probably
00:21:20.710 00:21:20.720 getting a little bit less benefit out of
00:21:24.039 00:21:24.049 the unit of water you put down to
00:21:26.049 00:21:26.059 actually frack stuff like that down on
00:21:28.899 00:21:28.909 this side you tend to see more of the
00:21:31.060 00:21:31.070 basins that have a lot of oil so not
00:21:34.029 00:21:34.039 quite sure how to tease that one out and
00:21:35.770 00:21:35.780 actually here we assume that all the
00:21:37.690 00:21:37.700 water was being attributed to natural
00:21:39.490 00:21:39.500 gas or oil on a BTU basis so there is an
00:21:44.140 00:21:44.150 argument to be made that actually
00:21:45.610 00:21:45.620 extracting oil takes a lot more water
00:21:47.200 00:21:47.210 than taking natural gas out just because
00:21:49.240 00:21:49.250 of the different viscosities and because
00:21:51.010 00:21:51.020 of things like water flooding those
00:21:52.360 00:21:52.370 types of practices so that number might
00:21:54.370 00:21:54.380 actually even be smaller for the actual
00:21:56.860 00:21:56.870 unit of associated gas you get in these
00:21:58.659 00:21:58.669 very oily basins but the the key
00:22:01.930 00:22:01.940 takeaway on that I guess is just there's
00:22:03.820 00:22:03.830 a pretty big spread across all of these
00:22:05.950 00:22:05.960 different basins I'd love to get my
00:22:07.750 00:22:07.760 hands on some good data for some of the
00:22:09.640 00:22:09.650 other basins the Marcellus in particular
00:22:11.409 00:22:11.419 springs to mind there are a couple of
00:22:12.850 00:22:12.860 other very very water intensive ones
00:22:14.770 00:22:14.780 that we know are more water intensive
00:22:16.450 00:22:16.460 than the more common basins but it's not
00:22:19.240 00:22:19.250 totally clear how this is dallen per
00:22:26.740 00:22:26.750 million btu yeah yeah
00:22:36.620 00:22:36.630 yes that is the EU are weighted average
00:22:39.660 00:22:39.670 so the expected ultimate recovery
00:22:41.280 00:22:41.290 weighted average for all of the natural
00:22:42.780 00:22:42.790 gas produced in Texas onshore so none of
00:22:45.090 00:22:45.100 the big ultra deep wells offshored that
00:22:47.070 00:22:47.080 are kind of interesting to look at but
00:22:49.190 00:22:49.200 also a little harder to get data for but
00:22:52.440 00:22:52.450 that's the onshore average for the 2010
00:22:55.410 00:22:55.420 to 2060 period projected it includes
00:22:57.990 00:22:58.000 some recycling the numbers are from 2010
00:23:00.210 00:23:00.220 so there's an argument to be made that
00:23:02.580 00:23:02.590 recycling will get a little bit better
00:23:04.230 00:23:04.240 but based on current technology current
00:23:06.510 00:23:06.520 recycling status that kind of thing as
00:23:08.430 00:23:08.440 of 2010 this is the expected ultimate
00:23:10.860 00:23:10.870 recovery weighted average for natural
00:23:12.600 00:23:12.610 gas in Texas about three gallons per
00:23:14.580 00:23:14.590 million btu what that immediately shows
00:23:16.800 00:23:16.810 you is that the state is waiting much
00:23:18.780 00:23:18.790 more toward these than the conventional
00:23:20.490 00:23:20.500 gas at lease on shore which is
00:23:22.590 00:23:22.600 interesting in itself and confirmed by
00:23:25.230 00:23:25.240 projections so it was good that it
00:23:27.060 00:23:27.070 worked out that way but um the the point
00:23:33.870 00:23:33.880 that I'd like to make about the coal
00:23:35.100 00:23:35.110 this bar is gallons per million btu of
00:23:38.940 00:23:38.950 coal produced in Texas out of those
00:23:40.710 00:23:40.720 lignite basins the dark brown is the non
00:23:42.960 00:23:42.970 dewatering consumption so that's the
00:23:44.550 00:23:44.560 stuff you're using to keep dust down um
00:23:47.010 00:23:47.020 for hotelling purposes like toilets and
00:23:50.730 00:23:50.740 stuff like that which does count up some
00:23:52.200 00:23:52.210 wine consumption a lot of the time
00:23:53.220 00:23:53.230 because they use their own produced
00:23:54.150 00:23:54.160 water for it equipment cooling that kind
00:23:56.670 00:23:56.680 of thing the other ninety percent of it
00:23:58.860 00:23:58.870 is dewatering water that is not assigned
00:24:01.410 00:24:01.420 to a downstream user in few cases the
00:24:03.630 00:24:03.640 mines actually discharged with the
00:24:05.280 00:24:05.290 intent of having somebody use that water
00:24:06.810 00:24:06.820 further downstream we took that water
00:24:08.280 00:24:08.290 out so this is stuff that is basically
00:24:10.350 00:24:10.360 earmarked to go out to the Gulf from the
00:24:12.630 00:24:12.640 aquifer and again it was very surprising
00:24:17.880 00:24:17.890 to us how big that number was also again
00:24:21.120 00:24:21.130 I feel like I need to reiterate the
00:24:24.450 00:24:24.460 caveat that that water's a lot cleaner
00:24:26.100 00:24:26.110 than some of the water that you might be
00:24:28.250 00:24:28.260 experiencing in other parts of the field
00:24:30.180 00:24:30.190 chain that said it is still water that
00:24:32.940 00:24:32.950 you're removing from its setting and
00:24:34.410 00:24:34.420 making less usable in the future and so
00:24:37.050 00:24:37.060 based on state state definitions it is
00:24:40.980 00:24:40.990 considered consumptive use and so that
00:24:43.860 00:24:43.870 that large number on the coal I think
00:24:46.560 00:24:46.570 was
00:24:47.610 00:24:47.620 not expected by pretty much anyone what
00:24:50.150 00:24:50.160 we did a little bit of back of the
00:24:52.260 00:24:52.270 envelope analysis to see what you might
00:24:53.910 00:24:53.920 experience some of the sub bituminous
00:24:55.680 00:24:55.690 basins so the Wyoming coal just because
00:24:58.110 00:24:58.120 that's the other cold that Texas uses
00:25:01.340 00:25:01.350 evidence and again this is not based on
00:25:03.540 00:25:03.550 great data is that it's kind of five to
00:25:05.520 00:25:05.530 twenty percent as high as this so much
00:25:07.799 00:25:07.809 much smaller that's in part because
00:25:11.640 00:25:11.650 those those mines are both bigger and
00:25:14.490 00:25:14.500 deeper and also because they're not as
00:25:16.980 00:25:16.990 much deeply in an aquifers the lignite
00:25:19.020 00:25:19.030 mines are so in a couple of cases in
00:25:21.120 00:25:21.130 Wyoming you actually don't need to do
00:25:22.530 00:25:22.540 water the mine at all just get lucky
00:25:24.180 00:25:24.190 with these sometimes hundred foot thick
00:25:26.310 00:25:26.320 seams of coal that you don't need to do
00:25:28.320 00:25:28.330 water which is convenient for the
00:25:30.390 00:25:30.400 operators but what it does mean is that
00:25:32.880 00:25:32.890 the Texas League night is particularly
00:25:34.650 00:25:34.660 water intensive yeah
00:25:51.090 00:25:51.100 so yes and no one of the things about
00:25:54.070 00:25:54.080 lignite and you see this in North Dakota
00:25:56.200 00:25:56.210 and you see it in Texas is that most of
00:25:57.970 00:25:57.980 the lignite mines are my mouth my mouth
00:26:00.850 00:26:00.860 mines my mouth plants rather because of
00:26:03.910 00:26:03.920 exactly that problem because it's lower
00:26:05.770 00:26:05.780 energy density it has a tendency to
00:26:07.510 00:26:07.520 spontaneously combust when you transport
00:26:09.310 00:26:09.320 it and when the dust starts getting
00:26:10.600 00:26:10.610 aerosolized and so what you do is take
00:26:12.220 00:26:12.230 it directly from the mine into the power
00:26:13.630 00:26:13.640 plant to avoid those problems so you
00:26:15.640 00:26:15.650 don't want to keep it wet that's going
00:26:17.170 00:26:17.180 to make it hard to burn but you also
00:26:18.370 00:26:18.380 don't want to transport it because it
00:26:20.049 00:26:20.059 would catch on fire um the other point
00:26:24.010 00:26:24.020 in both of these cases actually which is
00:26:25.600 00:26:25.610 quite different from some of the
00:26:26.650 00:26:26.660 interior coals down in Illinois and some
00:26:28.660 00:26:28.670 of the Appalachian calls that are
00:26:29.710 00:26:29.720 through the the East Coast is that these
00:26:32.950 00:26:32.960 coals both the lignite and the sub
00:26:34.720 00:26:34.730 bituminous coal from Wyoming or fairly
00:26:36.280 00:26:36.290 low energy density which means that
00:26:39.630 00:26:39.640 processing them in any significant way
00:26:42.160 00:26:42.170 is usually not worth it they're big
00:26:43.660 00:26:43.670 surface mines you scoop up the coal it's
00:26:45.340 00:26:45.350 basically generally thick seams and you
00:26:47.799 00:26:47.809 don't have a lot of rock intermingled
00:26:49.240 00:26:49.250 with it if you did you wouldn't be
00:26:50.620 00:26:50.630 mining it because it wouldn't be worth
00:26:51.640 00:26:51.650 it so you're not using water for like
00:26:53.230 00:26:53.240 flotation separation the way that you
00:26:54.700 00:26:54.710 might out here so that that consumptive
00:26:57.580 00:26:57.590 use that's not the watering is almost
00:26:58.960 00:26:58.970 exclusively dust control so that's kind
00:27:07.000 00:27:07.010 of the fun extraction stuff um and then
00:27:12.340 00:27:12.350 just just to come back to this point a
00:27:13.900 00:27:13.910 little bit because the is dewatering
00:27:16.060 00:27:16.070 actually consumption question is a valid
00:27:18.850 00:27:18.860 one this graph is the same version as
00:27:21.160 00:27:21.170 the other one but assuming that
00:27:22.390 00:27:22.400 dewatering is not actually consumption
00:27:24.910 00:27:24.920 so what you see is that the increased
00:27:27.730 00:27:27.740 water use for gas versus coal is quite a
00:27:29.950 00:27:29.960 bit higher and again this is assuming
00:27:31.870 00:27:31.880 that a lot of your call has no water
00:27:33.549 00:27:33.559 footprint at all and assuming the eor
00:27:35.380 00:27:35.390 rated weighted average for guess so it's
00:27:39.430 00:27:39.440 still not a huge effect but it is quite
00:27:41.110 00:27:41.120 a bit bigger if you assume that the
00:27:42.549 00:27:42.559 00:27:43.840 00:27:43.850 but just to give that picture efficiency
00:27:45.640 00:27:45.650 is still the huge driver here
00:27:49.910 00:27:49.920 yeah this one right this is million btu
00:28:15.200 00:28:15.210 of gas only so we did cut out the oil
00:28:17.090 00:28:17.100 versus gas production I think to clarify
00:28:19.370 00:28:19.380 the point 0 is making it's just that you
00:28:21.050 00:28:21.060 might actually be using more water than
00:28:22.790 00:28:22.800 you would if it were only guess to get
00:28:25.010 00:28:25.020 some of that oil out but we looked at
00:28:26.900 00:28:26.910 only the ultimate recovery for gas in
00:28:29.390 00:28:29.400 calculating this part so yeah there
00:28:31.910 00:28:31.920 shouldn't be any oil numbers
00:28:33.350 00:28:33.360 intermingled in here we tried to check
00:28:36.110 00:28:36.120 for that but Barnett I think it's about
00:28:46.550 00:28:46.560 the same there's no water flooding as
00:28:47.900 00:28:47.910 such that's done it's just straight
00:28:49.190 00:28:49.200 hydraulic fracturing pretty much the
00:28:51.200 00:28:51.210 same as you would do in the Marcellus or
00:28:52.640 00:28:52.650 Barnett yeah so you're something's
00:28:54.260 00:28:54.270 either are quite good yeah but it was an
00:28:58.880 00:28:58.890 interesting output um I don't know that
00:29:01.520 00:29:01.530 I expected that much spread across the
00:29:03.410 00:29:03.420 different unconventional basins actually
00:29:04.850 00:29:04.860 and again I would love to see some
00:29:05.990 00:29:06.000 outside of Texas that were analyzed in
00:29:08.660 00:29:08.670 the same way because this is basically
00:29:10.100 00:29:10.110 based on an extensive survey of
00:29:12.620 00:29:12.630 producers over I think about 10 years
00:29:15.440 00:29:15.450 and then projected out to 2060 so hard
00:29:18.680 00:29:18.690 to get compared to a true of all of
00:29:20.330 00:29:20.340 those basins compared for example to the
00:29:22.100 00:29:22.110 Marcellus is that in all those bases
00:29:24.770 00:29:24.780 you're getting back a lot more water
00:29:26.390 00:29:26.400 when you frack and then you get the flow
00:29:27.860 00:29:27.870 back you're getting up to at least 50
00:29:30.530 00:29:30.540 sometimes eighty percent in those basins
00:29:32.810 00:29:32.820 right in Marcel's it's the opposite
00:29:34.400 00:29:34.410 you're getting twenty percent back and
00:29:36.440 00:29:36.450 more cells you're leaving a lot more
00:29:38.060 00:29:38.070 water down so it would be interesting to
00:29:40.550 00:29:40.560 to look at the different numbers it's
00:29:42.410 00:29:42.420 it's also i think really interesting to
00:29:44.690 00:29:44.700 me in that sense because you are getting
00:29:46.250 00:29:46.260 a lot more of this water back but
00:29:47.450 00:29:47.460 there's a bit less pressure to recycle
00:29:49.100 00:29:49.110 it that's not universally true and
00:29:51.320 00:29:51.330 especially in some areas like the
00:29:52.610 00:29:52.620 barnett where you literally are fracking
00:29:55.010 00:29:55.020 at dallas/fort Worth Airport everyone
00:29:56.960 00:29:56.970 can see it often you're using drinking
00:29:58.250 00:29:58.260 water to do it although I think they
00:29:59.600 00:29:59.610 made that illegal a couple years ago um
00:30:01.270 00:30:01.280 it's very visible and it's
00:30:03.680 00:30:03.690 like I said Texas has been in the in the
00:30:06.379 00:30:06.389 throes of essentially the new drought of
00:30:08.149 00:30:08.159 record for the last few years and so
00:30:09.919 00:30:09.929 when people are being told you can't
00:30:11.269 00:30:11.279 water your lawn you can't do your
00:30:13.190 00:30:13.200 laundry you can't whatever even though
00:30:15.619 00:30:15.629 there's I think typically culturally a
00:30:18.320 00:30:18.330 little bit more of a pro energy
00:30:20.360 00:30:20.370 extraction stance down there than there
00:30:21.889 00:30:21.899 might be out here seeing this very
00:30:24.889 00:30:24.899 conspicuous use of water in places where
00:30:26.990 00:30:27.000 you might not have had that use before I
00:30:29.029 00:30:29.039 think has been pretty unsettling for
00:30:31.399 00:30:31.409 people and so hearing the attitudes
00:30:33.409 00:30:33.419 about what's going on that's kind of
00:30:34.940 00:30:34.950 well you know we want the gas and we
00:30:36.560 00:30:36.570 want to be producing it here and we want
00:30:38.659 00:30:38.669 to make sure that we keep this industry
00:30:40.070 00:30:40.080 alive but at the same time like my trees
00:30:42.379 00:30:42.389 all died why can you do this and I can't
00:30:45.200 00:30:45.210 and prove to me that this is actually
00:30:46.430 00:30:46.440 important given that prices are low all
00:30:48.440 00:30:48.450 that sort of stuff it's it's a very
00:30:50.330 00:30:50.340 different conversation than you get out
00:30:51.889 00:30:51.899 here from what I can tell but it's still
00:30:53.840 00:30:53.850 a very active line the pumped water from
00:30:58.369 00:30:58.379 the coal and using it for those purposes
00:31:00.080 00:31:00.090 I assume it's good they're in pretty
00:31:02.060 00:31:02.070 different places okay so unfortunately
00:31:04.279 00:31:04.289 it's kind of that nice swath that used
00:31:07.039 00:31:07.049 to be the ocean coming in from the side
00:31:12.430 00:31:12.440 so I think before opening it up entirely
00:31:15.259 00:31:15.269 to questions just the one other point I
00:31:17.029 00:31:17.039 want to make quickly with a less pretty
00:31:19.100 00:31:19.110 chart is the carbon capture and storage
00:31:21.139 00:31:21.149 point so if you did start to put carbon
00:31:23.539 00:31:23.549 capture systems onto the back end of
00:31:25.249 00:31:25.259 existing natural gas combined cycle
00:31:27.049 00:31:27.059 plants or pulverized coal plants with
00:31:30.049 00:31:30.059 existing technologies and I recognize
00:31:31.730 00:31:31.740 that there are a lot of things that are
00:31:32.960 00:31:32.970 being done that are sort of pre
00:31:34.580 00:31:34.590 combustion technologies or better immune
00:31:36.259 00:31:36.269 systems but I mean scrubbers sticking
00:31:38.810 00:31:38.820 them on the back of plants that exists
00:31:40.549 00:31:40.559 already the amount of water that you
00:31:43.159 00:31:43.169 start using per kilowatt hour drums
00:31:44.749 00:31:44.759 really really dramatically for a couple
00:31:47.419 00:31:47.429 of reasons so one being there's a huge
00:31:51.740 00:31:51.750 parasitic load associated with carbon
00:31:54.200 00:31:54.210 capture and storage so because you're
00:31:55.490 00:31:55.500 using steam to capture your carbon for
00:31:58.369 00:31:58.379 like cleaning out your immune system and
00:32:00.289 00:32:00.299 stuff like that you're taking a wasting
00:32:02.119 00:32:02.129 that would otherwise be diverted through
00:32:03.320 00:32:03.330 a generator and producing power so you
00:32:04.879 00:32:04.889 have a direct electric parasitic load on
00:32:07.460 00:32:07.470 that side that means you're using a lot
00:32:08.720 00:32:08.730 more fuel your cooling more per per
00:32:12.259 00:32:12.269 kilowatt hour that you're putting out
00:32:13.340 00:32:13.350 stuff like that and then there's also
00:32:15.019 00:32:15.029 just the direct water use of those
00:32:16.609 00:32:16.619 carbon cap
00:32:17.240 00:32:17.250 your systems so in the cold case what
00:32:20.540 00:32:20.550 you see is that you can almost double
00:32:22.640 00:32:22.650 the amount of water that you're using
00:32:24.140 00:32:24.150 per kilowatt-hour when you start talking
00:32:26.360 00:32:26.370 about putting an ambien system onto the
00:32:28.040 00:32:28.050 back the natural gas combined cycle case
00:32:30.080 00:32:30.090 is a little bit better again because
00:32:31.580 00:32:31.590 they tend to start out more efficient
00:32:33.080 00:32:33.090 they've got this air-cooled component
00:32:34.520 00:32:34.530 that kind of thing but still you're
00:32:35.960 00:32:35.970 you're increasing your water consumption
00:32:37.730 00:32:37.740 by over half again and so just kind of
00:32:40.820 00:32:40.830 an interesting point as we talk about
00:32:42.260 00:32:42.270 trying to control carbon at the same
00:32:43.790 00:32:43.800 time as we're trying to handle our water
00:32:45.110 00:32:45.120 problems at the same time as we're
00:32:46.310 00:32:46.320 trying to handle economic issues with
00:32:47.720 00:32:47.730 electricity there are a lot of competing
00:32:50.510 00:32:50.520 things that we're trying to balance here
00:32:52.250 00:32:52.260 that actually don't all go together so
00:32:54.730 00:32:54.740 just throwing that out there is kind of
00:32:57.620 00:32:57.630 an interesting looming point if we ever
00:32:59.570 00:32:59.580 do good on that path yeah in these
00:33:05.540 00:33:05.550 plants and what happens when you have a
00:33:08.020 00:33:08.030 cashiers depends who you talk to um a
00:33:13.480 00:33:13.490 few years ago the rule of thumb was kind
00:33:16.670 00:33:16.680 of thirty percent electrical parasitic
00:33:18.320 00:33:18.330 load it's more recent tests and after
00:33:21.020 00:33:21.030 they put that system in it Mountaineer
00:33:22.610 00:33:22.620 and it suggests more like fifteen
00:33:24.770 00:33:24.780 percent but still electrical parasitic
00:33:27.140 00:33:27.150 load it's pretty big and there's not a
00:33:29.060 00:33:29.070 whole lot of actual operational data so
00:33:30.860 00:33:30.870 once you start throwing in things like
00:33:32.300 00:33:32.310 load following and stuff like that it's
00:33:34.910 00:33:34.920 somewhere between probably ten and
00:33:37.280 00:33:37.290 thirty percent similar argument at least
00:33:44.630 00:33:44.640 on the extraction site actually applies
00:33:45.920 00:33:45.930 to dry cooling as well because you've
00:33:47.330 00:33:47.340 got this parasitic load so you're using
00:33:48.800 00:33:48.810 more fuel per unit of electricity that
00:33:52.400 00:33:52.410 you're putting out you're ultimately
00:33:53.600 00:33:53.610 using less overall water because you're
00:33:55.100 00:33:55.110 using less cooling water but you're
00:33:56.660 00:33:56.670 using more water to extract and that
00:33:58.700 00:33:58.710 water is coming from different places
00:33:59.810 00:33:59.820 that might be less able to do it or more
00:34:01.820 00:34:01.830 able to do it hard to say but making
00:34:05.150 00:34:05.160 certain water choices can throw
00:34:06.920 00:34:06.930 different water consequences up and down
00:34:09.139 00:34:09.149 the fuel chain either side so it's kind
00:34:11.210 00:34:11.220 of an interesting thing to think about
00:34:12.260 00:34:12.270 particularly as we start having more
00:34:15.190 00:34:15.200 basin transfer of energy so again in
00:34:18.470 00:34:18.480 Texas most of the most of the gas that
00:34:20.510 00:34:20.520 is used down there is produced within
00:34:22.159 00:34:22.169 the state that's not really true in the
00:34:23.570 00:34:23.580 rest of the US so trading off a water
00:34:26.710 00:34:26.720 impact in Iowa for one in Pennsylvania
00:34:29.750 00:34:29.760 or something like that is
00:34:30.980 00:34:30.990 a pretty real thing so I think with that
00:34:36.430 00:34:36.440 yeah what just kind of the conclusions
00:34:39.290 00:34:39.300 more efficient plants use less water so
00:34:41.169 00:34:41.179 efficiency is really really helpful in
00:34:43.820 00:34:43.830 this kind of situation cooling is the
00:34:46.730 00:34:46.740 main driver of water consumption that
00:34:48.409 00:34:48.419 was a fairly known fact previously
00:34:50.750 00:34:50.760 people have been saying that extraction
00:34:51.980 00:34:51.990 was a pretty much negligible use I think
00:34:54.139 00:34:54.149 it's more like ten percent some people
00:34:56.149 00:34:56.159 would still call that negligible but
00:34:57.410 00:34:57.420 cooling is the big driver of water use
00:34:59.150 00:34:59.160 for the electricity fuel cycle and on
00:35:02.660 00:35:02.670 the extraction site again I think that
00:35:04.160 00:35:04.170 it's probably not fair to say that it's
00:35:06.230 00:35:06.240 a negligible amount of water that's
00:35:07.490 00:35:07.500 going into our our fuel extraction
00:35:09.620 00:35:09.630 particularly when you start thinking
00:35:11.090 00:35:11.100 about quality impacts and adequacy
00:35:12.800 00:35:12.810 impacts and the geology that you're
00:35:14.960 00:35:14.970 working in matters quite a lot so
00:35:17.080 00:35:17.090 especially since they're not here I'm
00:35:19.760 00:35:19.770 just wanted to acknowledge my co-authors
00:35:20.840 00:35:20.850 and funding and open it up for questions
00:35:25.330 00:35:25.340 thank you guys yeah i actually did throw
00:35:43.370 00:35:43.380 this into last minute so we use this
00:35:45.530 00:35:45.540 kind of cool tool that you may or may
00:35:47.630 00:35:47.640 not have seen it came out of Carnegie
00:35:49.849 00:35:49.859 Mellon the economic input-output
00:35:52.010 00:35:52.020 lifecycle analysis tool they basically
00:35:54.320 00:35:54.330 go on for all sectors of the economy
00:35:56.690 00:35:56.700 it's really sweet you should check it
00:35:57.950 00:35:57.960 out per dollar of economic impact or
00:36:04.070 00:36:04.080 economic input in all the major industry
00:36:07.760 00:36:07.770 categories across the United States what
00:36:09.380 00:36:09.390 kind of error missions water emissions
00:36:10.820 00:36:10.830 water consumption water withdrawals do
00:36:12.349 00:36:12.359 you get out so what we did to get at the
00:36:15.620 00:36:15.630 province was basically try to evaluate
00:36:18.460 00:36:18.470 what's or in this case I think this
00:36:21.830 00:36:21.840 examples for the chemicals but we did a
00:36:23.330 00:36:23.340 pretty similar thing for province and
00:36:25.210 00:36:25.220 try to think about what actually goes
00:36:27.170 00:36:27.180 into that so here we looked at basically
00:36:30.970 00:36:30.980 chemical manufacturing tried to figure
00:36:33.650 00:36:33.660 out from a couple of other studies that
00:36:35.510 00:36:35.520 have been done about how many dollars
00:36:36.859 00:36:36.869 worth of chemicals go into each well and
00:36:40.310 00:36:40.320 then throw it into the tool what we
00:36:42.500 00:36:42.510 decided for our low estimate was that we
00:36:44.339 00:36:44.349 would only use the water that was
00:36:45.509 00:36:45.519 directly being put into into that
00:36:48.630 00:36:48.640 chemical manufacturer so here like if
00:36:51.390 00:36:51.400 these are all of the water withdrawals
00:36:53.249 00:36:53.259 through the whole fuel chain going all
00:36:54.809 00:36:54.819 the way back to grain farming as you see
00:36:56.700 00:36:56.710 this is again where you start to get
00:36:58.079 00:36:58.089 layers upon layers upon layers a
00:37:01.640 00:37:01.650 conservative way of looking at how much
00:37:03.569 00:37:03.579 water's actually going into the chemical
00:37:04.920 00:37:04.930 manufacturing is just to look at the
00:37:06.539 00:37:06.549 chemical manufacturing line so that was
00:37:08.729 00:37:08.739 our low estimate on the highest emmitt
00:37:10.680 00:37:10.690 we assumed that all of this and this is
00:37:13.620 00:37:13.630 a withdrawal basis but we assumed all
00:37:15.870 00:37:15.880 water withdrawals that are associated
00:37:17.160 00:37:17.170 with chemical production were counted as
00:37:21.120 00:37:21.130 consumption with the exception of the
00:37:23.130 00:37:23.140 power generation so we assumed about 1%
00:37:25.049 00:37:25.059 of the water that was withdrawn for
00:37:26.670 00:37:26.680 power generation that was feeding these
00:37:28.259 00:37:28.269 chemical plants was actually being
00:37:30.120 00:37:30.130 consumed it's a fairly typical ratio and
00:37:32.849 00:37:32.859 then just added those all together so
00:37:34.950 00:37:34.960 low estimate just direct withdrawals for
00:37:37.469 00:37:37.479 chemical manufacturing high estimate
00:37:39.059 00:37:39.069 direct withdrawals for everything and
00:37:42.140 00:37:42.150 about 1% of the withdrawals for power
00:37:44.700 00:37:44.710 generation the prop inside is a little
00:37:48.989 00:37:48.999 bit different only because some of
00:37:50.279 00:37:50.289 that's actually in mind so we looked at
00:37:51.690 00:37:51.700 both the minds and something more like
00:37:53.489 00:37:53.499 this for the manufactured ones they're
00:37:54.930 00:37:54.940 ceramics so it was a different industry
00:37:56.430 00:37:56.440 but similar approach
00:38:13.650 00:38:13.660 yes fortunately somebody a couple of
00:38:17.050 00:38:17.060 years ago actually published a study
00:38:18.280 00:38:18.290 that try actually also used this data
00:38:20.860 00:38:20.870 set which we figured out later and tried
00:38:23.440 00:38:23.450 to get a dollars per well figure which
00:38:25.510 00:38:25.520 then we could translate into a dollars
00:38:27.250 00:38:27.260 per mbtu so some of that work we were
00:38:30.130 00:38:30.140 able to validate with this other thing
00:38:31.720 00:38:31.730 that came out in the middle of us doing
00:38:33.550 00:38:33.560 this work so that was really helpful but
00:38:35.080 00:38:35.090 yeah it's a data set that is pretty rich
00:38:38.560 00:38:38.570 and kind of hard to get at but I think
00:38:40.690 00:38:40.700 more people are starting to use it it's
00:38:42.550 00:38:42.560 interesting there's a lot more detail
00:38:47.350 00:38:47.360 actually um if you are interested this
00:38:50.350 00:38:50.360 is an open source paper and
00:38:51.640 00:38:51.650 supplementary information is all online
00:38:53.170 00:38:53.180 too and there's a lot more on how we did
00:38:55.570 00:38:55.580 this if your kid is okay yeah but is
00:39:00.850 00:39:00.860 there a large difference between the
00:39:02.170 00:39:02.180 size of the work force involved in these
00:39:03.970 00:39:03.980 two different industries or did you look
00:39:06.460 00:39:06.470 at that at all on water consumption well
00:39:08.230 00:39:08.240 just I mean I again the water
00:39:10.300 00:39:10.310 consumption of the workers would not
00:39:11.590 00:39:11.600 make a big difference but I I would
00:39:13.120 00:39:13.130 assume it's some coal miners are really
00:39:14.860 00:39:14.870 thirsty no yeah there is a pretty big
00:39:19.660 00:39:19.670 difference in total employment coal
00:39:21.250 00:39:21.260 mines do not employ that many people um
00:39:23.260 00:39:23.270 and because a lot of the gas stuff is
00:39:27.120 00:39:27.130 rapid and geologically or geographically
00:39:30.100 00:39:30.110 dispersed you do see a bit more
00:39:31.870 00:39:31.880 employment on that side we started to go
00:39:34.240 00:39:34.250 down the path of some of the societal
00:39:35.710 00:39:35.720 impacts of using more gas in Texas
00:39:39.400 00:39:39.410 versus continuing to import cold or
00:39:41.530 00:39:41.540 moving away from coal and stuff like
00:39:42.820 00:39:42.830 that that gets hairy very quickly um but
00:39:46.240 00:39:46.250 yeah ultimately guest generates probably
00:39:48.880 00:39:48.890 more labor purged per mmbtu in Texas at
00:39:52.450 00:39:52.460 least might be different in other places
00:39:54.930 00:39:54.940 yeah
00:40:03.640 00:40:03.650 a little bit I think ultimately one of
00:40:08.920 00:40:08.930 the situations there's that since they
00:40:10.450 00:40:10.460 are all using the same rivers and since
00:40:12.100 00:40:12.110 a lot of those taxes tend to work on
00:40:13.630 00:40:13.640 inter-basin transfers rather than
00:40:15.670 00:40:15.680 intercity transfers or something like
00:40:17.230 00:40:17.240 that em I'm not sure how big of a change
00:40:20.620 00:40:20.630 it would have made it would be really
00:40:22.390 00:40:22.400 interesting to look at there might
00:40:25.330 00:40:25.340 actually be some impact just because a
00:40:26.770 00:40:26.780 lot of the gas plants because they tend
00:40:28.060 00:40:28.070 to be cleaner where they are are more in
00:40:30.850 00:40:30.860 urban areas where the coal plants are a
00:40:32.140 00:40:32.150 little bit outside so like Austin for
00:40:34.060 00:40:34.070 example has a couple of gas plants very
00:40:35.770 00:40:35.780 very in the middle of the city and then
00:40:37.630 00:40:37.640 the big coal plant 45 minutes outside
00:40:39.930 00:40:39.940 same river but different water demand
00:40:43.540 00:40:43.550 areas so you don't have any of the urban
00:40:45.160 00:40:45.170 demand by the coal plant you have a lot
00:40:46.300 00:40:46.310 of the urban demand by the gas plant so
00:40:47.800 00:40:47.810 maybe we didn't look at it though yeah
00:40:59.160 00:40:59.170 and I guess I don't really know
00:41:01.840 00:41:01.850 what
00:41:05.219 00:41:05.229 spin t-spin steam after
00:41:17.859 00:41:17.869 that one I'm not an expert on I know
00:41:20.810 00:41:20.820 that there are some some people talking
00:41:23.120 00:41:23.130 about recovering water off of cooling
00:41:24.980 00:41:24.990 towers I'm not sure how effective that
00:41:27.590 00:41:27.600 is particularly at older plants so I
00:41:29.930 00:41:29.940 actually I legitimately don't know so I
00:41:32.120 00:41:32.130 won't pretend to um but that is an
00:41:35.090 00:41:35.100 interesting question a lot of these are
00:41:38.090 00:41:38.100 actually still once through though so
00:41:40.430 00:41:40.440 you just you don't have a lot of
00:41:41.720 00:41:41.730 evaporative loss anyway it's interesting
00:41:44.599 00:41:44.609 to think about though I'm not sure on
00:41:45.980 00:41:45.990 the extraction site it's a lot of the
00:41:47.570 00:41:47.580 same stuff that you see elsewhere it's
00:41:48.950 00:41:48.960 on the gas side reinjection recycling
00:41:52.390 00:41:52.400 transportation that kind of thing on the
00:41:54.320 00:41:54.330 coal side it's probably more like just
00:41:56.510 00:41:56.520 finding a user downstream that is
00:41:58.430 00:41:58.440 willing to put their hand up and say yes
00:42:00.020 00:42:00.030 that is my water right and its
00:42:01.280 00:42:01.290 associated here and therefore I'm
00:42:02.690 00:42:02.700 freeing up my other water right so Texas
00:42:05.150 00:42:05.160 is a little bit strange in that it has
00:42:06.980 00:42:06.990 different sets of water right laws um so
00:42:10.370 00:42:10.380 traditionally the the rule has been
00:42:12.560 00:42:12.570 stated as biggest pump wins if it's on
00:42:14.810 00:42:14.820 your property and you can pump it it's
00:42:17.030 00:42:17.040 your water and that is your water right
00:42:18.590 00:42:18.600 you're not restricted because of
00:42:20.870 00:42:20.880 droughts and because of urbanization and
00:42:23.060 00:42:23.070 stuff like that in certain areas they
00:42:24.500 00:42:24.510 started to get a little bit more
00:42:25.460 00:42:25.470 prescriptive about who owns right
00:42:26.840 00:42:26.850 assigning senior rights junior it's all
00:42:28.430 00:42:28.440 that sort of thing so it kind of depends
00:42:30.260 00:42:30.270 where you are um but yet in the coal in
00:42:33.200 00:42:33.210 the cold case probably just identifying
00:42:35.210 00:42:35.220 somebody who's willing to speak up for
00:42:36.710 00:42:36.720 that water and claim it instead of their
00:42:38.300 00:42:38.310 other right would be one option yeah
00:42:53.509 00:42:53.519 Oh
00:43:00.329 00:43:00.339 no and the big reason for that is that
00:43:03.299 00:43:03.309 we just couldn't get the data on the gas
00:43:04.680 00:43:04.690 side the argument on the coal site is
00:43:08.099 00:43:08.109 that because it's mandated that you meet
00:43:10.319 00:43:10.329 certain quality standards you have a
00:43:11.670 00:43:11.680 pretty good idea of what's in the water
00:43:12.900 00:43:12.910 I would question that without actually
00:43:15.690 00:43:15.700 being able to go take samples just based
00:43:17.999 00:43:18.009 on the history of coal industries I
00:43:19.589 00:43:19.599 think these guys are probably probably
00:43:22.529 00:43:22.539 pretty close to there they're regulated
00:43:25.079 00:43:25.089 limits just based on some of the other
00:43:28.049 00:43:28.059 stuff that I know about those minds but
00:43:30.029 00:43:30.039 yeah on the gas side we started out
00:43:33.450 00:43:33.460 really hoping that we could do a lot of
00:43:34.769 00:43:34.779 quality analysis and the data just
00:43:36.299 00:43:36.309 aren't there so that would be great and
00:43:39.120 00:43:39.130 I hope that over the next few years
00:43:40.229 00:43:40.239 especially some of these more
00:43:41.400 00:43:41.410 underdeveloped basins start to have more
00:43:43.349 00:43:43.359 wells associated with them that we
00:43:45.569 00:43:45.579 actually will be able to get more
00:43:46.680 00:43:46.690 information because Texas now also has
00:43:49.440 00:43:49.450 disclosure rules about what you're
00:43:50.880 00:43:50.890 actually putting down hole that kind of
00:43:52.349 00:43:52.359 thing so between that and a lot of
00:43:55.920 00:43:55.930 research that's going on in the state
00:43:57.479 00:43:57.489 because it's a it's a fairly big piece
00:43:59.759 00:43:59.769 of the economy down there the gas side
00:44:01.410 00:44:01.420 anyway I hope that we will have enough
00:44:04.559 00:44:04.569 data to do that soon have you been able
00:44:08.009 00:44:08.019 to do that out here yeah we need to keep
00:44:13.079 00:44:13.089 trying because I think it would be
00:44:14.099 00:44:14.109 interesting yeah
00:44:24.420 00:44:24.430 w that
00:44:30.890 00:44:30.900 I
00:44:33.700 00:44:33.710 I phrased that poorly so like this chart
00:44:39.040 00:44:39.050 applies to the stuff you're exporting to
00:44:40.630 00:44:40.640 I guess what I what I should have said
00:44:44.050 00:44:44.060 and how I should have said that is that
00:44:45.490 00:44:45.500 we only looked at the gas that was being
00:44:46.870 00:44:46.880 used in the power sector so we assumed
00:44:50.260 00:44:50.270 that the gas used in the power sector
00:44:51.520 00:44:51.530 has the same profiles all the guess it's
00:44:53.109 00:44:53.119 being produced but we did have a little
00:44:54.910 00:44:54.920 bit of a challenge initially deciding
00:44:56.650 00:44:56.660 you know which gas really is being used
00:44:58.570 00:44:58.580 in the power sector and if you started
00:45:00.010 00:45:00.020 to add on a whole bunch of new gas
00:45:01.780 00:45:01.790 demand because you started switching
00:45:02.950 00:45:02.960 from coal to gas or something like that
00:45:04.329 00:45:04.339 which guests would you put on first
00:45:06.339 00:45:06.349 would you assign only the conventional
00:45:08.349 00:45:08.359 guess its shape to produce would you
00:45:10.359 00:45:10.369 assign the expensive guess that nobody
00:45:12.599 00:45:12.609 maybe there's not demand for unless you
00:45:15.040 00:45:15.050 start adding your own internal demand so
00:45:17.050 00:45:17.060 the marginal piece of gas that you would
00:45:19.240 00:45:19.250 actually burn in Texas it's not clear
00:45:21.790 00:45:21.800 whether that's one of the more water
00:45:22.960 00:45:22.970 intensive or one of the less water
00:45:24.160 00:45:24.170 intensive pieces of guest so we
00:45:25.420 00:45:25.430 ultimately went with the average but
00:45:26.950 00:45:26.960 that was a little bit of a speech
00:45:28.870 00:45:28.880 artifact from a long long debate that
00:45:31.780 00:45:31.790 ultimately resulted in us just taking an
00:45:33.550 00:45:33.560 average but yeah like you can make the
00:45:36.400 00:45:36.410 argument that in the absence of external
00:45:39.099 00:45:39.109 markets and if everything collapsed and
00:45:40.900 00:45:40.910 you wanted to keep running power plants
00:45:42.339 00:45:42.349 in Texas you just use the easiest gas to
00:45:44.589 00:45:44.599 get you can also make the argument that
00:45:46.480 00:45:46.490 you have all these contracts outside so
00:45:47.950 00:45:47.960 you will use the hardest gas in state so
00:45:50.070 00:45:50.080 but cost and water use don't always go
00:45:53.200 00:45:53.210 together either so going down a rabbit
00:45:55.960 00:45:55.970 hole here a little bit but we can talk
00:45:57.130 00:45:57.140 about it more later if you want
00:46:04.360 00:46:04.370 yeah water you store I bought because
00:46:25.010 00:46:25.020 they're anywhere in the same city turns
00:46:27.350 00:46:27.360 to being slow to the reception areas
00:46:35.000 00:46:35.010 where the drawing down water for ipod
00:46:37.130 00:46:37.140 fracture exactly yes it's partially not
00:46:43.100 00:46:43.110 in every case but there are enough shale
00:46:44.780 00:46:44.790 basins that and texas is agricultural
00:46:47.510 00:46:47.520 enough still that yes a lot of its ranch
00:46:49.100 00:46:49.110 land admittedly so it's not like the
00:46:50.750 00:46:50.760 great fields of corn that you might have
00:46:52.160 00:46:52.170 elsewhere but yeah I mean the lot of the
00:46:56.000 00:46:56.010 Texas cattle started getting herded
00:46:58.820 00:46:58.830 basically north because there wasn't
00:47:00.080 00:47:00.090 enough water to keep them alive in the
00:47:01.520 00:47:01.530 last couple years and so yeah it
00:47:03.050 00:47:03.060 definitely is a real trade-off and one
00:47:05.360 00:47:05.370 of my colleagues actually has done a
00:47:06.320 00:47:06.330 little bit of work trying to see how you
00:47:07.730 00:47:07.740 could do transfers between agriculture
00:47:09.500 00:47:09.510 and energy production by like having the
00:47:12.470 00:47:12.480 gas producers pay for more efficient
00:47:13.910 00:47:13.920 watering systems and stuff like that so
00:47:15.710 00:47:15.720 they are coincident for sure
00:47:22.030 00:47:22.040 they're often the same people that's not
00:47:26.870 00:47:26.880 universally true but just in terms of
00:47:29.150 00:47:29.160 who actually has huge bits of land and
00:47:31.400 00:47:31.410 who actually owns all the rights to that
00:47:33.500 00:47:33.510 land because it's been in their family
00:47:34.520 00:47:34.530 for a long time or whatever so they've
00:47:36.109 00:47:36.119 got the mineral rights and the surface
00:47:37.339 00:47:37.349 rights the ranches are where you're
00:47:39.079 00:47:39.089 drilling so yes it's a trade up and I
00:47:42.020 00:47:42.030 think it's it's an interesting economic
00:47:44.660 00:47:44.670 thing to watch too because depending on
00:47:46.400 00:47:46.410 gas prices versus beef prices for
00:47:48.829 00:47:48.839 example you might trade off which one
00:47:50.599 00:47:50.609 you're devoting more water to in a given
00:47:51.890 00:47:51.900 year I'm speaking a bit off the cuff I
00:47:55.040 00:47:55.050 actually haven't looked into that
00:47:55.910 00:47:55.920 specifically but I suspect that you
00:47:58.339 00:47:58.349 probably would see that effect a little
00:47:59.750 00:47:59.760 bit but yeah it's it's interesting
00:48:02.569 00:48:02.579 because their shale everywhere um so
00:48:09.640 00:48:09.650 development is moving toward the south
00:48:11.960 00:48:11.970 west because that's where the liquids
00:48:13.880 00:48:13.890 are yep exact prices are low oil prices
00:48:16.130 00:48:16.140 are so high so and that's a Nigeria to
00:48:18.319 00:48:18.329 him interesting I don't know how many of
00:48:20.870 00:48:20.880 you have seen the NASA pictures Jim and
00:48:22.640 00:48:22.650 I were talking about it a little bit
00:48:23.540 00:48:23.550 earlier but just looking down and being
00:48:25.160 00:48:25.170 able to see all the flares in the back
00:48:26.390 00:48:26.400 end and then being able to see the ego
00:48:28.339 00:48:28.349 ferd as well I still have some questions
00:48:30.079 00:48:30.089 about whether that's electrical lighter
00:48:31.309 00:48:31.319 flares or both but the bakken's players
00:48:35.630 00:48:35.640 00:48:46.570 00:48:46.580 it's a great place so I know Texas most
00:48:55.060 00:48:55.070 of Texas is like a very strange
00:48:57.190 00:48:57.200 deregulated energy
00:49:00.680 00:49:00.690 it's it's what California did right
00:49:04.230 00:49:04.240 before the major power crisis one of the
00:49:06.960 00:49:06.970 classes I took at UT actually the
00:49:08.430 00:49:08.440 professor basically walked in and is
00:49:09.780 00:49:09.790 like we didn't fix any of the problems
00:49:11.190 00:49:11.200 that they had but n runs out of business
00:49:12.660 00:49:12.670 now so maybe we'll be okay that aside
00:49:15.150 00:49:15.160 yes um it is a pretty interesting thing
00:49:18.000 00:49:18.010 because you have the gas plants and the
00:49:19.980 00:49:19.990 coal plants competing really really
00:49:21.480 00:49:21.490 truly directly here I mean energy
00:49:23.640 00:49:23.650 utilities in Texas have gotten to the
00:49:25.470 00:49:25.480 point where they'll like offered to send
00:49:26.940 00:49:26.950 you flowers on your birthday is one of
00:49:28.590 00:49:28.600 the advantages that you have for
00:49:29.850 00:49:29.860 choosing I mean it's it's pretty funny
00:49:31.650 00:49:31.660 actually sometimes or like free power
00:49:34.320 00:49:34.330 during the Superbowl stuff like that
00:49:35.640 00:49:35.650 like it's a little gimmicky almost at
00:49:38.220 00:49:38.230 this point I think UT itself actually
00:49:39.960 00:49:39.970 has branded electricity now so you pay a
00:49:42.240 00:49:42.250 little bit of a premium and that goes to
00:49:43.560 00:49:43.570 the University anyway um it's an it's a
00:49:46.980 00:49:46.990 wild market down there a bit and that
00:49:49.050 00:49:49.060 does have some impacts on how these
00:49:50.520 00:49:50.530 plants actually operate that I don't
00:49:53.160 00:49:53.170 think that the data sets that we use
00:49:54.450 00:49:54.460 necessarily incorporated most of our
00:49:56.340 00:49:56.350 plant level data was kind of 2008 to
00:49:58.230 00:49:58.240 2010 which is before most of the
00:50:00.690 00:50:00.700 competitive completely deregulated modal
00:50:03.690 00:50:03.700 market started to come online now what
00:50:08.160 00:50:08.170 you would probably see is that because
00:50:09.720 00:50:09.730 more coal plants and even more of the
00:50:12.180 00:50:12.190 natural gas-based load plants themselves
00:50:13.640 00:50:13.650 are being asked to load follow more than
00:50:17.520 00:50:17.530 they were before because it's no longer
00:50:19.200 00:50:19.210 as simple as just or cot saying that's
00:50:22.560 00:50:22.570 the grid in Texas just saying you know
00:50:24.330 00:50:24.340 you go you go you go but it's actually
00:50:26.150 00:50:26.160 competitive at the time of running um
00:50:28.710 00:50:28.720 you probably see efficiency drops for
00:50:31.140 00:50:31.150 some of the plants and that probably
00:50:33.240 00:50:33.250 means that they're using a little bit
00:50:34.680 00:50:34.690 more of their water
00:50:45.470 00:50:45.480 it's not my oming so yeah the the big
00:50:49.440 00:50:49.450 federal swaths of land you don't have to
00:50:52.140 00:50:52.150 the same extent as you do in a lot of
00:50:53.760 00:50:53.770 the West proper um I think most of it's
00:50:57.900 00:50:57.910 privately owned there are some really
00:50:59.040 00:50:59.050 really big parks but most of the places
00:51:01.560 00:51:01.570 where you actually have production I
00:51:02.819 00:51:02.829 think are privately owned by Kieran
00:51:07.370 00:51:07.380 depends on which public land you're
00:51:09.210 00:51:09.220 talking about so like a perfect example
00:51:12.089 00:51:12.099 being both UT in Texas A&M our
00:51:15.150 00:51:15.160 land-grant universities one of the big
00:51:18.120 00:51:18.130 issue and this is like a strange version
00:51:20.040 00:51:20.050 into Texas politics but one of the big
00:51:21.599 00:51:21.609 issues is that the land that the
00:51:23.910 00:51:23.920 University of Texas System was given is
00:51:25.859 00:51:25.869 in the Permian Basin so there's a lot of
00:51:27.960 00:51:27.970 oil there that goes directly to the
00:51:29.640 00:51:29.650 University that's all considered public
00:51:31.370 00:51:31.380 the land that am got is a lot more
00:51:33.960 00:51:33.970 agricultural less oil revenue from it so
00:51:35.880 00:51:35.890 the money balance to the two schools
00:51:37.530 00:51:37.540 comes out differently so like in that
00:51:38.849 00:51:38.859 sense there is public land and this has
00:51:40.890 00:51:40.900 an effect on how the state works but I
00:51:43.740 00:51:43.750 don't know how significant that is
00:51:44.940 00:51:44.950 overall
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