A new report by a conservation group concludes that water use associated with drilling and hydraulic fracturing in Colorado is consuming billions of gallons a year in a state that's suffering drought conditions.

The 28-page report released today by Boulder, Colo.-based Western Resource Advocates (WRA) says the state needs to better plan for the large volume of water use associated with fracking and drilling activity across the Front Range, and in individual counties, to ensure the industry's water usage does not significantly affect municipal, agricultural and other uses.

The oil and gas industry consumed as much as 12.8 billion gallons of water for drilling and fracking in 2011, or enough to meet the water consumption needs of nearly 120,000 homes, according to the WRA report titled "Fracking Our Future." That's still far less than the total volume of water consumed by agricultural, municipal or large industrial uses, according to Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission (COGCC) data, but already more than ski resorts use for snow making, as well as what's used statewide each year for coal, natural gas, uranium or solar development.

"The water needed for new oil and gas development is a substantial new demand that we don't fully understand, and which we haven't and aren't currently planning for," Laura Belanger, a WRA water resources and environmental engineer, said today during a conference call with reporters. "As a state, we need to better quantify drilling and fracking water needs and to better understand where the water is coming from now and where it will come from in the future."

And the WRA report said that unlike domestic and agricultural water use, the water used for fracking is 100 percent consumed, and the produced water from fracking is usually injected into deep wells and does not return to streams and other surface waterways.

"Water's scarce throughout most of the West, and in the West as with elsewhere in the country, it's a finite resource that must be shared amongst many water users," Belanger said. "So it's critical that we understand, plan for and balance oil and gas water needs with other water demands."

Denver-based Western Energy Alliance, an industry trade group, dismissed the report as misleading.

"Rather than a biased report from an environmental group," said Kathleen Sgamma, the alliance's vice president of government and public affairs, the public should instead rely on COGCC, the Colorado Water Conservation Board and the Colorado Division of Water Resources "for credible information on water in the state of Colorado."

"These agencies find that [fracking] accounts for 0.08 percent of water use in Colorado -- an excellent balanced use of water resources, especially when compared to the $24 billion in annual economic impact from oil and natural gas development," Sgamma said.

Todd Hartman, a spokesman for the state Natural Resources Department that oversees the COGCC, pointed to a state "white paper" that concluded the industry used only about 4.8 billion gallons of water statewide for hydraulic fracturing last year and projected that the water use for fracking would increase to about 6 billion gallons of water by 2015.

"The water currently used for hydraulic fracturing in Colorado is comparatively speaking very small, and amounts to orders of magnitude less water than that used for agriculture, to provide for residents and supply major industry," Hartman said in a statement to E&ENews PM. "That said, we recognize that water in Colorado is a precious resource that we depend on not only for various basic needs, but also to support a flourishing environment. With that in mind, we encourage the industry to continue to adopt best practices in the reuse and recycling of water, and we're encouraged by efforts to increase water efficiency in energy production."

Ongoing debate

But the WRA report is sure to add fire to the ongoing debate over hydraulic fracturing and concerns that it is dangerous and a waste of valuable resources.

It comes at a time when fracking -- the technique of injecting water, sand and chemicals underground at high pressure to create fissures in tight rock formations and allow gas and oil to flow freely to the surface -- has opened up huge oil and gas reserves from Pennsylvania to Texas that would otherwise be inaccessible.

Along Colorado's Front Range, from Colorado Springs up to Fort Collins near the Wyoming border, drilling rigs are sprouting quickly as developers scramble to tap the rich Niobrara Shale formation. But a growing number of rigs are going up for the first time near residential areas, sparking concern from residents and some local government leaders about impacts to water quality.

That has led some Colorado counties and municipalities to approve or propose restrictions or outright bans on the use of fracking, mostly out of concern over drinking water supplies. U.S. EPA is conducting a national study to determine whether fracking can contaminate drinking water supplies.

The Bureau of Land Management last month proposed a rule requiring chemical disclosure and setting standards for well design and wastewater disposal for fracking operations on public lands. Industry staunchly opposes the proposed BLM rule, and the Western Energy Alliance released a report this month estimating the new regulations could cost the industry as much as $1.6 billion a year (Greenwire, June 12).

Only recently has the issue of water quantity associated with fracking come into question.

A state auction this spring that involved more than 8 billion gallons of unallocated water in northeast Colorado, where the Niobrara play is starting to boom, raised the ire of the agriculture sector because a growing volume was purchased by companies that supply water to the oil and natural gas industry for use in fracking (EnergyWire, April 5).

In some local areas, the volume of water used for drilling and fracking is already significant, according to the WRA report.

It cited Weld County, where more than half of all new Colorado wells were drilled last year. WRA used state reports and industry data to estimate that drilling and fracking activity in Weld County consumed as much as 6.8 billion gallons of water last year -- the equivalent of two-thirds of the county's total public and domestic water use in 2011, according to the report.

"That would be a significant amount of water in any year, let alone a year like this when we're facing a drought that's constraining our water supplies," Belanger said.

While Weld County is at the front of an emerging boom in new onshore crude oil production sparked by the Niobrara, many other regions of the state may soon face similar water challenges in the near future, said Mike Chiropolos, chief counsel of WRA's Lands Program.

"The current boom will eventually slow down and go bust like all others," Chiropolos said during the conference call. "At the end of the day, our water is a more precious commodity than fossil fuels. We have alternative energy supplies and cleaner alternatives that are increasingly competitive. But we can't live without abundant supplies of clean water to support agriculture and sustain our communities."

Click here to read the report.

Streater writes from Colorado Springs, Colo.