Produced water is a term used in the oil industry to describe water that is produced when oil and gas are extracted from the ground. Oil and gas reservoirs have a natural water layer (formation water) that lies under the hydrocarbons. Oil reservoirs frequently contain large volumes of water, while gas reservoirs tend to have smaller quantities. To achieve maximum oil recovery additional water is often injected into the reservoirs to help force the oil to the surface. Both the formation water and the injected water are eventually produced along with the oil and therefore as the field becomes depleted the produced water content of the oil increases.
Read more about Produced Water: Waste Re-use and Disposal
Famous quotes containing the words produced and/or water:
“The poverty of our century is unlike that of any other. It is not, as poverty was before, the result of natural scarcity, but of a set of priorities imposed upon the rest of the world by the rich. Consequently, the modern poor are not pitied ... but written off as trash. The twentieth-century consumer economy has produced the first culture for which a beggar is a reminder of nothing.”
—John Berger (b. 1926)
“It is by teaching that we teach ourselves, by relating that we observe, by affirming that we examine, by showing that we look, by writing that we think, by pumping that we draw water into the well.”
—Henri-Frédéric Amiel (1821–1881)