YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio – Mahoning County officials are in discussions to land a $10 million project that would treat wastewater from hydraulic fracturing operations and recycle it for reuse in oil and gas exploration.
Mahoning County Sanitary Engineer J. Robert Lyden told officials Tuesday at a meeting of a newly formed shale development group that the county is in negotiations to sell one million gallons of water to an as yet unnamed recycling company at a rate of $6,000 a day.
"We're very close, but it's not a done deal," Lyden emphasizes.
A contract has yet to be negotiated, and once that's accomplished, it must be approved by the Mahoning County prosecutor and the Board of Mahoning County Commissioners, he says.
The company would construct a $10 million treatment center that recycles wastewater – commonly called brine – that is produced from hydraulic fracturing operations, Lyden says. The plant would treat and clean the wastewater by diluting the brine; then, drilling companies would repurchase the water for reuse in future "fracking" operations.
"The whole shale development issue comes down to water," Lyden observes. "On one fractured well, they used 10 million gallons of water. Multiply that by thousands of wells, and you end up with a huge volume."
He says the project would most likely be developed in the Jackson-Milton water district. The new plant should employ between 20 and 30 people.
Lyden says that the region's infrastructure network makes the Mahoning Valley an ideal location for such a plant. Plus, eastern Ohio sits in the middle of the Utica Shale, a large rock formation that potentially holds trillions of cubic feet of dry and wet gas.
Chesapeake Energy Corp. and Rettew Flowback, a company based in Lancaster, Pa., recently opened its treatment center in Carroll County.
That center, a part of Chesapeake's Aqua Renew system, runs 16 hours a day and treats between 250 and 300 barrels of water per hour and hold up to 13,000 barrels at the site.
Copyright 2012 The Business Journal, Youngstown, Ohio.