According to the World Policy Institute, coal-and-oil-fired power plants consume roughly twice the water than that of gas-fired facilities while nuclear generation needs three times that of natural gas.
FORBES: Water Shortages May Leave Energy Producers Dying of Thirst
Altela provides on-site water desalination to mining and oil and gas companies.
He pointed to the shale-gas revolution in the U.S., along with deep-water and heavy oil, as examples of how Mexico can benefit from new technologies that boost energy output, lower prices and create jobs.
Investors have filed hundreds of water-related shareholder resolutions, filed primarily with oil and gas, electric power, and food and beverage companies.
Until recently, oil and gas produced from deep-water fields have been brought to the surface and transported to onshore processing facilities.
FORBES: World's First Subsea Smart Grid Changes Offshore Oil and Gas Game
Specially formulated lubricants are used in fracking, which involves pumping water, fine sand and fracking fluids underground to split open oil- and gas-bearing rocks.
Shallow-water wells, he said, usually produce gas, not oil, lessening the chance of a spill.
For example, some 1, 000 barrels of crude oil, water and gas mixture poured onto the tundra after a 2-foot gash formed in a pipeline in November 2009.
Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, pumps millions of gallons of water mixed with fine sand and chemicals deep into oil and gas wells to crack gas-bearing rock.
Environmentalists strongly oppose shale-gas extraction due to fears that fracking may contaminate water supplies, the oil-sands industry because it is energy-intensive and dirty, and deep-water drilling because of the risk of oil spills like last year's Gulf of Mexico disaster.
WSJ: Big Oil Companies Are Shifting Their Focus Back to the West
The backstory: since the 1970s the Land and Water Conservation Fund (which, only semi-ironically, gets its money from federal royalties from offshore oil and gas drilling) has given money to local governments for parks.
Fracking uses high-pressure mixtures of water, sand or gravel and chemicals to crack rock formations and release oil and natural gas deep underground.
Online, America's aching Achilles' heel is the wide-open automated control systems that run the nation's networks for electricity, water, gas, oil and more.
The oil and gas industry had won a victory last week when the Obama administration said new shallow-water drilling would be allowed, provided companies meet certain safety and environmental standards.
应用推荐