The Business of Salt Water Disposal in Oklahoma

How to Make Money out of Water Business

Most of the oil wells in Northern America use hydraulic fracturing or fracking to extract oil.  Huge amount of water is required for fracking. Each well may use from 2 to 6 million gallons of water for hydraulic fracking.  It is estimated that for entire North America, the amount of water which be used for fracking in 2012 may even cross 72 billion gallons.

Due to this reason water is emerging as an extremely lucrative industry.  The main reason for this is that the cost involved in providing water for fracking may run into billions of dollars.  For investors this is an opportunity to make  good capital gains.  Even in United States, the amount of water used by oil and gas industry was 25 billion barrels in 2008.  The amount spent on water would run into billions even at a rate of 60 cents a barrel. 

The major companies which have already entered in this field include GreenHunter Energy Inc, Heckmann Corp and Ridgeline Energy Services.  These companies along with smaller players provide water purification and recycling technology for oil industries for fracking.  However investment in this area has to be done with caution as the gains could be affected by changes in regulations as there are already objections from environmental groups against some of the existing practices adopted for usage of water for fracking.

According industry experts, the awareness about the investment in salt water disposal business is increasing during last two years.   This is attracting investors into the areas of storage, transportation and treatment of water for oil industry.

The analysts are projecting great returns in the next few years in this industry as thousands new oil wells are being drilled every year and majority of them are using horizontal fracking for oil extraction. According to estimates by  GreenHunter the market in Marcellus in 2011 had been nearly $1.7 billion and it may reach $22 billion within a decade.  Similarly, the market for water disposal may reach $ 6 to $9 billion in Eagle Ford in next 10 years.  The estimates for Bakken oil formation is $10.6 billion in next two decades.

These figures show that cautious investment in water treatment for oil extraction is a good option for getting  high returns.