Resource in Resource Plays? Solving Water Issues via Paradigm - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Produced Salt Water: The Overlooked Resource in Resource Plays? Solving Water Issues via Paradigm Shifts, New Technologies, Markets, and Community Partnerships

Susan Smith Nash, Ph.D. AAPG

Multi-Pronged Challenges and Opportunities

Challenges  Outrage over diversion of water for non-community use  Contamination fears (aquifers and surface)  Potential of Induced Seismicity Opportunities  Optimize / minimize use of water  Avoid using surface water and groundwater  Recycle, reuse, purify  Water gathering systems / consolidation of processing

Paradigm-Shift: New Set of Opportunities

Drilling Programs: Salt Water As the Target?  Dispense with salt water disposal wells altogether – don’t inject, purify  Prospect for brine (with associated gas and oil) that has optimal qualities for purifying to gray water and potable water quality  Develop joint ventures with communities in need of water  Develop infrastructure (communities use bond issues for the infrastructure)

Produced Water Purification: Finally Economic?

 Equitable uses and distribution of water  Emissions standards increasingly stringent  Technology of purification improving

 Reverse osmosis  Distillation  Innovative methods

 Improved remote monitoring to minimize cost of corrosion control, scale inhibitors, etc.  Range of markets: agricultural, potable, boutique

!

Getting Started: Identify Goals & Ultimate Objectives

Communities and Technological Change  Equitable uses and distribution of water  Sustainable life / communities  Sustainable extraction of resources we need  Avoiding unintended consequences

 Microbial consequences  Toxicities  Health issues  Encouraging over-population  (which is the problem? Population? (Malthus)

• r Technology (Latour, Verbeek)

Communicate!

• Neutrality vs. Moral Agency
• Hydraulic fracturing is a

neutral process; the people who apply it can behave in an evil way

• Hydraulic Fracturing Is Evil
• Responsibility, Design, Risk

Assessment

• For best result, use “neutrality”

argument and emphasize responsibility (for the implementers

• f technology as well as the

beneficiaries / stakeholders)

Recurring Ethical Themes in Technology

• Which ones work?
• Which ones do not? Why?

Industry-specific with other groups

• Communities
• Technical professionals
• Educational
• Groups (parents, religious

groups, etc.)

Alliances: What Are They?

Communicate with different constituencies: Mission & vision consistent

• Erikson: Trust is the first level of

psychosocial development – if not established early, mistrust, paranoia, and suspicion cannot be overcome

• How to establish trust?
• Communication
• Openness
• Access to all levels of an
• rganization
• No “David & Goliath”

relationships

Trust: What does it look like?

ACTIVIST GROUPS:

• PETA
• Sierra Club
• Greenpeace, etc.

“SHAREHOLDER ADVOCATES”:

• Carl Icahn, etc.
• Manipulating issues to affect

investor behaviors COMMUNITY DEVELOPERS:

• Life-sustaining
• Decorative water
• Design “value-adds”

“It Is Better to be Feared than Loved”

Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince

Niccolo Machiavelli

The “Leviathan” called in to assure equitable distribution? Common power will force cooperation? Reality – Strong Government / Monarch, etc. will ASSURE the development of a war?

• We need dissent as pressure relief
• We need perception of self-interest

being satisfied

• Must avoid extreme escalation of

water conflicts (avoid making it a life or death issue)

Note: Hobbes lived during England’s Civil War

Water Wars: Coming soon? Inevitable?

Thomas Hobbes: 1588 – 1679 – The Leviathan (1660)

“No arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear and danger of violent death; and the life of man solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” ― Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan

Quietly Fund Dissenters?

• Encourage “pressure release” via

self-interest expression

• Publish / social networking

constructive debate

• Lionize teams and groups of

different sides Avoid Escalation

• Do not reward martyrdom

Encourage Multiple Solutions

• Grassroots technological adoption
• Fund alternative technologies

Make Injection a Thing of the Past

Economically reclaim / reuse / recycle

Avoiding Escalation to War Waged Over Water

Decision-Points

http://zenzebra.net/decisionpointswater/