Two California Startups Team Up To Challenge Halliburton’s Costs For Cleaning Produced Water and Frack Water
PearlH2O’s FRACK-BACK system which integrates OriginOil’s CLEAN-FRAC technology is projected to achieve breakthrough 2.5 cent per gallon water treatment operating cost
Los Angeles, CA – March 13, 2013 – OriginOil, Inc. (OTCBB: OOIL), the developer of a breakthrough energy production process for the oil and algae industries teamed up with its first licensee, PACE spinoff PearlH2O, to challenge industry giant Halliburton’s published costs for cleaning flowback water for reuse in wells.
“Halliburton reported on its cost to operate their CleanWave system in the Haynesville shale in 2011, which comes to four cents per gallon of water treated,” said Riggs Eckelberry, OriginOil CEO. “But based on its experience in the Eagle Ford Formation in southeast Texas, PearlH2O estimates it can achieve operating costs as low as 2.5 cents per gallon by integrating our CLEAN-FRACK™ technology, with potentially much better results than CleanWave. We believe this is a revolution in the making for the oil industry and we look forward to scaling up with our partner, PearlH2O.”
“Halliburton’s achievement of 95-99% removal of Total Suspended Solids, Total Hydrocarbon, Iron and Heavy Metals is just the starting point for our own FRACK-BACK™ process,” said Andy Komor, VP Environmental Water at PACE. “In addition, our tests have shown we can achieve substantial removal of hardness and dissolved organics.
“As a bonus”, added Bill Charneski, General Manager of OriginOil’s Oil and Gas Division, “we believe we can achieve near-total bacteria removal, which for Halliburton requires an entirely separate process, Clean-Stream. All of this for a cost much lower than Halliburton’s CleanWave alone. Clearly, we can offer a completely new value proposition and we invite the oil and gas industry to try us out.”
Cory Severson, President of PearlH2O, went on to say, “Our projected cost analysis is based on 30 years of experience in designing and operating water treatment systems. Furthermore, and perhaps most significant, is that the projected costs do not take into consideration potential revenue from the sale of treated water or recovered oil. We believe that reusing or selling treated water creates a compelling economic incentive that should shift the mentality of the industry from disposal to recycling.”
Eckelberry also commented on the environmental benefits of the technology: ”Recycling of produced and frac water not only makes economic sense, it is the right solution for the environment and for local economic development. Reusing produced and frack water will benefit an increasing number of areas where fresh water is scarce. In addition, recycling allays contamination concerns that have resulted from evaporation ponds or disposal wells.”
OriginOil’s CLEAN-FRAC system is a chemical free, continuous process that employs low-energy technologies to decontaminate frack or produced water onsite at the oil field. It is designed to integrate with systems like PearlH2O’s FRACK-BACK that can purify oil and gas process water to enable reliable recycling of produced and frac flowback water.
Recent field trials outside Bakersfield, California, indicated that organics, measured by Chemical Oxygen Demand (COD), were reduced by as much as 99%. And Total Suspended Solids (TSS), also known as turbidity, were reduced by as much as 98%. A video documenting this success is available at www.vimeo.com/60586952.
