Select Energy Services, LLC, a provider of water management solutions for the oil and gas industry, has formed a strategic partnership with X-Chem/Terra Services, an oilfield wastewater treatment and recycling company.
The two companies are working together on three water treatment projects in the Permian Basin, with Terra providing the equipment, manpower, expertise and logistics for on-the-fly water treatment in hydraulic fracturing operations. Select, meanwhile, contributes the infrastructure and water focus to utilize Terra's capabilities.
Of the three recently launched projects, two are for freshwater sterilization combined with flowback recycling once the fracked wells begin producing. The third is a produced water treatment project for the complete reuse of produced water for future slickwater fracks.
The two companies are also jointly pursuing several other projects across the United States.
It's a burgeoning market: a report released this week by Bluefield Research predicts that the U.S. water treatment market for fracking will grow to $357 million by 2020, from $138 million in 2014.
This year alone, the U.S. fracking industry will spend $6.38 billion on water management, including treatment, supply, transport, storage and disposal, the report states.
The amount of water that fracking companies treat and reuse is expected to double by the end of the decade to about 27 percent of total produced and flowback water, from 14 percent now, Bloomberg reported.
