Startup company Encore Green Environmental has officially launched its initiative to repurpose byproduct water from oil and gas drilling for agricultural use.
According to Rawlins Times, through the first project, up to 7,000 barrels of treated water will be applied on land near the Wyoming-Nebraska border.
Marvin Nash, co-founder of Encore Green with his wife, Darlene, said the key to the project is in developing healthy soil for ranching and crop development.
“The historic impact of this is really dynamic,” said Nash. “The lady that owns that land with her husband (Don), she just sat out there Tuesday and said, ‘This is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen,’ because they have got a piece of land there that has no water, and on Tuesday, it had water.”
The project was permitted by the Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality and the Wyoming Oil and Gas Conservation Commission. It will continue on the land that Dan Brown, a resident owns.
Along with Laramie County, Encore Green has obtained WDEQ permits to pursue potential projects in Converse and Sublette counties.
According to Encore Green President John Robitaille, the company plans to set up headquarters in Cheyenne and has been gauging landowners’ interest across the state.
“We’re pursuing several different projects – one in Converse County, one in Sheridan County and another one in Laramie County,” said Robitaille. “Among other states, we are also reaching out into New Mexico, Oklahoma, Texas and Illinois, of all places. So we are really broadening our horizons and looking out, but for Wyoming, those are our next three real big potential projects.
The byproduct water is treated through thermal heating and reverse osmosis to meet constituency parameters set by the WDEQ. This water does not have to come from existing drilling activities.
Encore Green’s patent-pending process for cleaning the water, referred to as Conservation By-Design, provides an opportunity for another budding technology in Wyoming: blockchain.
“(Blockchain) will track the constituency of the water from the point that we clean it into the point that we put it on the ground,” Robitaille added. “When we put it on the ground, we have soil monitors that show moisture, electrical conductivity and temperature, so the probe sits in the ground and gives us all that information.”
“Throughout the entire process, we can always be assured that everything that you see is certified and true to exactly what’s been reported (because of blockchain),” he added.
Encore Green’s water quality data can be accessed here.
With the support of the Wyoming Stock Growers Association, the company could have other repurposing projects up and running in coming months.
