Salt of the Earth: Salt, Water and Damage to Land in the Bakken and the Williston Basin

Damaged Land

Oilfield developers in North Dakota’s Bakken and the Williston Basin have to worry about two issues that bookend every frack: getting enough fresh water to the well site to perform hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, and then properly disposing of what comes back up to the surface as produced water. Water may prove to be the albatross around the neck of oil development in the Bakken play. And amidst all that produced water there’s not a drop to drink because even after treatment it is not suitable for human consumption or agricultural use. Reinjection simply removes the formerly fresh water from the natural hydrological cycle. Read more...