Saving water, cutting costs and creating regular revenue for a region

Client Challenge

Our client launched a $25 million, 20-mile infrastructure project to save water and cut costs for the mutual benefit of its business and the city of Odessa, Texas. The project was part of a wider initiative to conserve freshwater, providing millions of gallons of treated municipal wastewater for use in the client’s operations. In return, the region would see a reduction in truck traffic and a regular revenue stream.

Water supply is critical to our client’s drilling operations. The water is mixed with sand and other components to create a slurry, used during hydraulic fracturing. Making use of effluent, reused water for this purpose would reduce the need for freshwater, making productive use of a non-potable resource.

We were asked to help with the technical challenges. These included the use of high density polyethylene (HDPE) material common in the oil and gas sector, which are normally applicable to different codes and standards. The pipeline would also cross environmentally sensitive areas. Government regulations required assurance that no leaks of the process fluid would occur.

How we helped

We performed a technical review of key documents for our client’s water supply programme. Our support included a detailed review of the release valve spacing for the pipeline to ensure optimum spacing of the valves. Release valves are used to let air in and out of the pipelines for flow assurance. They also provide an added level of safety.

Our support brought broad expertise in providing technical assurance services to the oil and gas and other industries, with a proven technical-assurance methodology used on over 100 projects.

Business Benefits

We outlined the findings from the project in technical assurance reports, and during meetings and workshops with the client and the company designing the pipeline infrastructure. The recommendations in our review were implemented by the client for the pipeline project. Key benefits of our work included:

• confidence that the pipeline met requirements of industry standards, guidelines and best practices
• appropriate documentation for the regulator
• confidence that the release valve locations were at the optimum locations.

This project was carried out by Lloyd’s Register (LR) Energy, prior to the strategic carve out of the LR Energy business in 2020, which is now Vysus Group.