ater is commonly abundant in rock units that host accumulations of oil and gas. As a consequence of this association, oil wells typically produce volumes of water that are many times greater than the amount of oil. The composition of the co-produced water provides information relevant to understanding petroleum reservoirs, determines the need for anti-scaling additives, affects the design of water handling and treatment systems, and may limit disposal and beneficial use options. Produced water is therefore an issue relevant to developing petroleum resources and protecting the environment.

The type and abundance of constituents dissolved in produced water (salts and other compounds) vary within and among geologic basins (Daly and Mesing, 1990; Collins, 1985). The variability is the result of geochemical reactions between the water and rock, hydrology and geologic history (for example Kharaka and others, 1985; Stueber and others,1998; Land and Prezbindowski, 1981). The wide spatial distribution of petroleum production areas and the range in produced water composition support the need for an accessible compositional database.

The produced water database presented at this web site is a revision of a database originally compiled at the DOE Fossil Energy Research Center that was located in Bartlesville, Oklahoma. The USGS modified the original database by removing redundancies, verifying internal consistency and adding information to the fields that describe the location, geologic setting, sample type, and major ion chemical composition. A preliminary version of the revised database, a description of the review methods and illustrations of the contained information are presented.

References

Collins, A.G., 1985, Geochemistry of Oilfield Waters: Developments in
Petroleum Science 1: New York, Elsevier Scientific Publishing Company.

Daly, D.J., and Mesing, G.E., 1995, Atlas of Gas Related Produced Water for 1990: Chicago, Gas Research Institute Topical Report 95/0016.

Kharaka, Y.K., Hull, R.W., and Carothers, W.W., 1985, Water-rock interactions in sedimentary basins: SEPM Shortcourse, v. 17, p. 79-176

Land, L.S., and Prezbindowski, D.R., 1981, The origin and evolution of saline formation water, lower Cretaceous carbonates, south-central Texas, U.S.A.: Journal of Hydrology, v. 54, p. 51-74.

Stueber, A.M., Saller, A.H., and Ishida, Hisashi, 1998, Origin, Migration and Mixing of Brines in the Permian Basin, Geochemical Evidence from the Eastern Central Platform, Texas: American Association of Petroleum Geologists Bulletin, v. 82, p. 1652-1672