Wyoming considers pipeline to handle coal-bed methane water
By The Associated Press
CASPER - The Wyoming Pipeline Authority is trying to determine whether it makes sense to develop a network of pipelines to carry coal-bed methane water away from the Powder River Basin and discharge it into the North Platte or Big Horn rivers.
Don Likwartz, supervisor of the Wyoming Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, said the amount of water being discharged by coal-bed methane wells is growing rapidly. He said that by the end of October 2006, the industry already had produced more water than it did in all of 2005. When the final numbers are in, Likwartz expects the industry will have produced 680 million barrels of water last year.
"It's going to be the highest year ever for water production," he said.
Some view that as a problem because of what's in the water. Some ranchers and landowners complain salts and other compounds in the discharged water kill trees and grass. Environmental regulators in Montana have sued Wyoming in an attempt to get the state to regulate methane water discharges into rivers that flow into Montana.
Brian Jeffries, director of the Wyoming Pipeline Authority, said during Tuesday's meeting that a system of pipelines could carry an estimated 100 million barrels of water per day to treatment-and-injection sites or to the Big Horn or North Platte rivers.
But it would cost about 30 cents per barrel.
"The reaction was that 30 cents seems on the high side of some of our current alternatives," Jeffries said.
Still, Jeffries said, many companies like the idea of a pipeline because it would take away some of the uncertainty they currently face because of litigation between Wyoming and Montana over water issues.
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Published on Wednesday, February 21, 2007.
Last modified on 2/21/2007 at 11:18 am |
