It’s Addition, Not Subtraction at the Permian Basin Conference

We’re going to be at the Permian Basin 2019 conference this week in order to talk about math.

Yep, we’re going to try to convince oil company executives to add, not subtract. See, the conventional way they deal with produced/by-product water is to throw it away down a well. To subtract water out of the ecological equation.

But we’re here to talk about addition. In fact, it’s called Just Add Water because that’s what we’re proposing. Let’s don’t subtract that water from the ecological equation. Instead, let’s ADD that water (once processed to match the soil) to the surrounding land of the oil well. 

If we add, we end up with better soil, greater vegetation, and carbon mitigation. If we subtract, we get zero.

Don’t you think it’s better to add than subtract?

Want to know about the Just Add Water Initiative? Click here: https://www.encoregreenenvironmental.com/resources

Want to know our process? Click here:

https://www.encoregreenenvironmental.com/cbd

If you’re in Midland, give us a shout. We’d love to chat.  If you’re not, we’d love to chat anyway, 818.470.0285.

Let’s all get better at math.

Guest Blog: A New Solution for the Permian

Next week we are announcing our first Permian Basin project at the Produced Water Society’s conference in Midland. Our partner in this project is Cody Wilson, a fourth generation farmer who is a leader in innovation and processes to make American’s farms continue to supply the world’s food.

Cody is our guest blogger to talk about the project and his rationale of it:

Much like all difficult-to-solve problems, I believe there are many ways to look at the reusability of by-product/produced water.   Because there exists technology to clean and reuse this water, the problem cannot be accurately described as a technologicalproblem.   Numerous companies possess the ability to clean produced water to all but potable water standards. That’s not our problem.

You see, if we have access to the technology and have the desire to reuse this resource, why has re-purposing not been more widely adopted?  There must be another reason and that reason is money.

Because reclaimed water and fresh water are economic substitutes, the demand for one will be affected by the price of the other.  Even though fresh water is quite scarce in west Texas, everyone possesses the right of capture and can elect to sell fresh water for whatever price they can negotiate.  Currently in my area in Midkiff, that is somewhere between $0.27/ barrel to $0.50 / barrel.   So, any substitute for fresh water must compete at that same price or its demand will decrease. 

That, then, makes us ask: what can we do with re-purposed water so it can compete with fresh water sales?  

There are several solutions that the market might accept.  

• One would be to use our fresh water until it is scarce enough that the price increases.   As a farmer and citizen of west Texas, I would advocate against this solution. 

• The second solution would be to wait until new technologies are discovered to allow the price of produced/by-product water to compete with fresh water sales directly.  But who knows how long that will take?  

•  Finally, the third and more workable solution would be to put this produced/by-product water to work for us. 

What we are advocating is to use produced/by-product water to create electricity.   

Through the use of Concentrated Solar Power – where a large area of sunlight is focused onto a smaller area --  we can use the sun’s energy to create steam from a waste stream of produced/by-product water.  

Then, by using the steam to turn a turbine, we can create another product to sell, electricity.  

Finally, this steam is condensed back down to distilled water which we can then sell or use for irrigation.  While the distillation process is old technology,  it will still qualify for the Solar Tax Credit which is currently at 30% for 2019.  According to my research, the 30% tax credit is in addition to depreciation and can be carried forward.  It’s almost like having a government subsidized disposal.  

In summary, if you want to really start re-purposing produced /by-product water, then let’s put it to work for us.  

Imagine being able to charge normal disposal fees, sell electricity to the grid, sell distilled water, and still receive a 30% tax credit (in addition to depreciation) on the cost of the equipment including labor.  

Combining this with Encore Green Environmental’s Conservation By-Design™ method, this water not only creates electricity, it waters the ground as well.

Now that's a new solution for the Permian! 

Carbon Capture? We’ve Been Doing That For Years!

Carbon capture or carbon sequestration is a process where carbon is removed from the air, which improves air quality and mitigates climate disruption. It sounds like a pretty new, innovative idea. 

Well, it’s actually a process as old as dirt.

See one way to accomplish this is through a big word we all learned in school: PHOTOSYNTHESIS.

In case you can’t remember, that’s the process where a plant in the dirt, with the help of sunshine and water, will grow. No big deal to that, right? 

But wait! As part of that growing, the plants are hard-wired to pull carbon dioxide OUT of the air. 

They pull it into the plant and “sequester” it in the roots and surrounding soil. But that’s not all. The plant then releases oxygen into the air.

So, carbon gets cleaned out of the air, and nice, clean oxygen gets releases into the air. That’s photosynthesis, which accomplishes carbon capture.

That leads us to our point. If you want to clean up the air in the arid western states, grow things. And if you want to grow things on arid land, you have to introduce a new source of water. 

That’s what we do. It’s called Conservation By-Design™ and we re-purpose industrial produced/by-product water by cleaning it and applying it just right on the thirsty soil. 

Talk to us about it. You know you want to.

To learn about Conservation By-Design, go here:

EncoreGreenEnvironmental.com/CBD

To read the scientific evidence for what we’re talking about, go here:

EncoreGreenEnvironmental.com/resources

To talk to a person about this, go here:

 818.470.0285. 

How About This Green New Deal?

With apologies to the Representative from New York, we’d like to swipe the title of your proposed deal. 

See, a “green new deal” is what we’ve been talking about. No, not a Roosevelt-era “New Deal.”  A new deal for the land. Sometimes, that’s who doesn’t get the best deal, when we look at the history of the arid west. 

See, the Encore Green New Deal is based on our company, Encore Green Environmental. Our new deal is called Conservation By-Design™ and it’s green and a good deal.

We take the produced/by-product water from the fracking wells and we make it all green. The water is cleaned to match the surrounding soil’s specs and then it’s applied to the land to grow things. This results in a total ecological solution – better soil, cleaner air though organic carbon capture, and best of all --  water on formerly arid land. Everyone wins. Especially the land.

Let’s make a green, new deal.,

To learn about Conservation By-Design, go here:

EncoreGreenEnvironmental.com/CBD

To read the scientific evidence for what we’re talking about, go here:

EncoreGreenEnvironmental.com/resources

To talk to a person about this, go here:

 818.470.0285. 

We Invented Water

Okay, we really didn’t. But that’s the comment we got the other day on The Crude Life podcast when we explained Conservation By-Design™ . You can hear it HERE:

It’s not an invention of water, but rather re-defines HOW we handle the gazillion gallons of produced/by-product water that fracking wells spit out.  

Normally we count that water as ‘waste’ and inject it on the ground as no-good, not worth thinking about. Is that what we do with crude oil? Nobody puts it in their gas tank as crude. We refine it and then put it to good use. Why can’t we do the same with the water coming out of that same well.

We can process it to make it match the soil’s needs, sure. But can it be done in an economic model that makes sense? Up till now no. But today, Conservation By-Design™ has a viable model that doesn’t cost more than injection.

PLUS, we solve the big problem about water cleaning – what do you do with the water once it’s rid of foreign chemicals? Ship it somewhere? That’s not practical or economically viable. Inject it back in the ground like we do the unprocessed water? 

Why don’t we process that water to match the surrounding soil and then let’s apply that water to the ground for ag and conservation. That’s Conservation By-Design™. We didn’t invent water. It just seems like we did.

To learn about Conservation By-Design, go here:

EncoreGreenEnvironmental.com/CBD

To read the scientific evidence for what we’re talking about, go here:

EncoreGreenEnvironmental.com/resources

To talk to a person about this, go here:

 818.470.0285. 

Reflections While Waiting at Lubbock Airport

I have had the good fortune to meet and make friends with a lot of great people in my life. One of those was a true cowboy.

No, really, he played football for the Dallas Cowboys. And, oh yeah, he was also a PRCA rodeo cowboy steer wrestler and darn good pool player and he could even whittle a piece, if time permitted. 

So what does knowing Walt Garrison have to do with oil and gas, Encore Green Environmental, soil health and agriculture? Well, let me explain.

It’s 4 am and I’m at the airport in Lubbock Texas heading to Houston. Yesterday our company entered in to an MOU to start re-purposing water for agriculture use in the Hobbs, NM area. It’s a big project, covering over 65,000 acres. 

I meet with two ranchers that have worked on this idea for over 15 years and now it’s our company’s responsibility to make it happen -- and we will. 

So how does this involve Walt Garrison? Back in the day, if you asked Coach Tom Landry, he’d say that if it’s 4th and 3, give the ball to Garrison and he’ll get 3 yards. If it’s 3rd and 10 give the ball to Garrison and he’ll get 3 yards. 

That’s like Encore Green Environmental. My point is that we are here to get the last 3 yards. The other guys laid the ground work and set the idea of this conversation into play. Now, we’re here to go the last 3 yards and get our Pioneer spirits over the goal.

Thanks for trusting Encore Green Environmental. Walt, thanks for helping us all learn the impact of 3 yards.

#waltgarrison #cowboys 

Quit Sticking Your Head – And Produced – Water in the Sand!

Even though many say ostriches don’t really stick their head in the sand, we know some people that are doing just that. 

Okay, they don’t literally put their head in the sand, but they are literally sticking oilfield by-product/produced water into the sand. Or clay. Or dirt.

You see, when an oil company fracks, 3 to 6 times the amount of by-product/produced water comes out for every 1 barrel of oil. With the foresight of an ostrich, we collectively take that water and stick it in an injection well. 

But -- we don’t know what the quality of that water is. We just know that chemicals were added in the fracking process. 

And -- we don’t know where that water goes once injected. 

And – we are losing opportunity of doing something better with this water.

But now - we can keep ignoring the problems that this “solution” creates. Or . . . 

We can get our collective heads out of the sand and do something a bit smarter with this water. 

Let’s clean it by getting rid of those chemicals. Then, let’s apply it to the dry, dusty dirt of the West and grow vegetation. This starts a chain reaction of better soil, better vegetation, better air quality. 

We have a patent pending methodology, Conservation By-Design, that can accomplish all this.

But we won’t do one bit of it if our head is sticking in the sand!

To learn about Conservation By-Design, go here:

EncoreGreenEnvironmental.com/CBD

To read the scientific evidence for what we’re talking about, go here:

EncoreGreenEnvironmental.com/resources

To talk to a person about this, go here:

 818.470.0285. 

It’s Not “Produced Water Disposal” – It’s Just “Moved Water”

Are you not short, but “height challenged”? Are you not overweight, just “short for your weight”? Do you think that your cousin is not dumb, just “intellectually challenged”?

If so, then you probably call taking the by-product water from an oil well and trucking or piping it to an injection well and putting it in the ground as “disposing” of the water.

It’s not disposed of. It’s just been moved. 

When the oil company fracks, 3 to 6 times the amount of water comes out of the oil well compared to the actual oil. That water is then “disposed of.” But it’s still water and it’s still here. It just got moved to a new location and stuck in the ground. 

Let’s call it what it really is – it’s throwing away water.

With Conservation By-Design™, this water can be cleaned and put out onto the land. It’s not moved. It’s not disposed of. It’s put to use. That clean water helps the soil become healthy and to do the thing soil and water were designed to do – grow vegetation.

The oil company throws away trillions of gallons of water each year – the majority of that water is in the ARID West.  

Maybe we get a little less “intellectually challenged” about this – and put this water to beneficial-use for the good of us all!

To learn about Conservation By-Design™, go here:

EncoreGreenEnvironmental.com/CBD

To read the scientific evidence for what we’re talking about, go here:

EncoreGreenEnvironmental.com/resources

To talk to a person about this, go here:

 818.470.0285. 

What If The Sky Really Is Falling?

Everybody knows that guy, right?  He sees the glass half-empty and predicts doom as a hobby. But what if at least on water scarcity he’s right?

Here in the arid West, we need every drop of water we can find just to maintain the people, the cities, the conservation, and the agriculture we currently have. We can’t grow. But that’s not why we think the sky is starting to crumble. 

We are concerned because the status quo of our water usage in the West is significantly threatened.

We gotta have water to do all the things we need to do, from food to conservation to drinking water. The arid West has always been defined by the need for water – and literal wars have been fought over it.  

But you can put your six-shooter away. We don’t need to go to war – we just need a new solution.

At Encore Green Environmental, we have that solution. But it’s not what you expect!

Let’s use a NEW source of water for the arid West. And then let’s water the heck out of our land. 

How?

In the arid West, alongside our dry dirt devoid of vegetation sits thousands and thousands of oil wells. 

Yeah, so?

So, these oil wells produce oil, of course. But also, because of fracking, they spit out by-product water – 3 to 6 times the amount of water to oil. That’s trillions of gallons a year of this by-product water that is right now injected back into a well or left to evaporate. 

Here’s a wacky idea, why don’t we clean that water and then apply it to the land and get vegetation growing?  Because if vegetation grows, then conservation, agriculture, and air quality goals can be met and exceeded!

Let’s use this water to re-frack. Let’s use this water to for ag and conservation so that the aquifer is not being drained. 

In short – why don’t we keep the sky from falling by simply cleaning the water and applying it to our lands.

You say that might be hard to do. 

But we’ve already done the hard part:

·     We have a patent pending methodology called Conservation By-Design to  accomplish all this. 

·     We have worked to get legislation to facilitate it. 

·     We have worked to plot a regulatory pathway for it. 

·     We have worked it as a business to make it not cost more to the oil companies than they currently pay for “disposal.” 

Worried about the sky falling on your land, your kitchen tap, or your business? Let’s talk. 

The sky doesn’t have to fall.

To learn about Conservation By-Design, go here:

EncoreGreenEnvironmental.com/CBD

To read the scientific evidence for what we’re talking about, go here:

EncoreGreenEnvironmental.com/resources

To talk to a person about this, go here:

 818.470.0285

History Making - First Water Monitoring Probe Installed

Take a look!

It's a quick video that shows Encore Green Environmental's installation of the first-ever water monitoring probe that's used to re-purpose produced/by-product water for ag and conservation.

This is our next step in keeping the water data transparent and publicly available.

And that fuels sustainability!

Tell us what you think!

https://vimeo.com/346757759/964f8c4704