Geowa Information Technologies Ltd
October 15, 2015
Abstract
Ground water is used in the upstream oil and gas industry for a variety of purposes including enhanced oil recovery injection, hydraulic fracturing, drilling and production. The ground water is primarily sourced from wells drilled by the oil and gas companies on both private and crown lands. In a few cases, private wells drilled by landowners are used as a water source.
The well drillers are required to submit a report for every well drilled which includes details of the wells depth, geology and development and testing details. In addition, an approval under the Water Act is required for the usage of water from the wells.
Information relating to the well reports filed by the drillers is recorded in the Groundwater Information Center (GIC)database. Information relating to the Water Act approval is recorded in the Environmental Management System (EMS) database and the Water Use Return (WUR) database. Information in the EMS database is not necessarily correlated to information in the GIC database. Information in the WUR database is correlated to information in the EMS database based on the Approval number.
This project correlates the information in GIC for approximately 1350 wells drilled for upstream oil and gas operations with approval and water use information in the EMS and WUR databases. Tables linking the Well ID in GIC to approval ID in EMS along with details of well location, drilling and completion, qualitative and quantitative testing is recorded in a tabular format suitable for review with spatial software applications.
In addition the Government of Alberta operates a groundwater observation well network consisting of 225 active wells. The network collects and records water level and water quality data for each well on a regular basis. The data for the active and inactive wells in the Ground Water Observation Well Network (GOWN) is available for public download via the internet. All of the active wells in GOWN are correlated with GIC.
This project provides a tabular summary of the active GOWN wells. The table includes geographic coordinates in order that the information can be used in spatial software applications.
Executive Summary
In the process of oil and gas exploration and development proponents need to identify and understand local ground water resources either from the perspective of potential supply of water or from the perspective of monitoring impacts. This project identifies wells across the province that have been developed by U/S oil and gas operators for upstream oil and gas activities that could potentially be used as a shared source of ground water information.
The types of information that is collected regarding these wells includes drilling information such as depth, lithology and logging; well completion information such as casing material, pump depth, screen depth, and plug and seal information; quantitative and qualitative information about the water including pump testing, chemical analysis and production volumes and water level records. This project identifies the types of information that may be available based on the correlation of the GIC, EMS, WURS databases.
A list of wells is compiled in tabular format that can be used in spatial applications. The tables include basic summaries of the wells identifiers and links in the various databases as well as some basic information about each well including owner, depth, Water Act Approval ID, and other sorts of information available.
This project examines the structure of each database to help understand the relationships of information as well as understand where additional non digital information about each well may be available.
# 15-WIPC-02