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News ReleaseAug. 5, 2003 PNM Water Initiative Awarded Federal Funding
Albuquerque: PNM announced today that the company and the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) have received a Department of Energy (DOE) grant to study the use of produced water for future use in power generation at the PNM San Juan Generating Station (SJGS). The grant, which will be finalized sometime this fall, will fund research to study the availability, location and chemistry of produced water, water transportation and treatment alternatives, and necessary regulatory and legal modifications. EPRI and PNM applied for more than $400,000 to fund the study, which will help determine what level of government and private sector support are necessary to utilize produced water at SJGS. "We are pleased that PNM is the first utility in the country to receive DOE funding for this kind of water project," said Marc Christensen, director of special communications at PNM. "This project is unique because it would use waste water in place of fresh water, freeing up those supplies for other uses, including helping to manage water shortages caused by the prolonged drought in New Mexico. "We know that stewardship of natural resources is critical to New Mexico's future economic growth, and we need to play a critical role in ensuring this growth," he said. "Moreover, we need to ensure that SJGS can operate at full capacity during the summer months when electricity demand peaks." "Produced water" is high saline concentration water from deep aquifers that is brought to the surface during oil and gas production. Because of the water's salinity, it is not currently used for any industrial or household applications. New Mexico oil and gas producers currently inject produced water back into deep wells, a costly and labor-intensive process. The study will determine whether it is cost effective to treat and transport this waste product from the gas fields to SJGS, a distance of about 40 miles. Construction of water treatment facilities and pipelines to convey the produced wastewater are expensive. In addition to examining current technologies capable of commercial application, EPRI and PNM will work with Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) to determine whether new, advanced treatment technologies can be tested and demonstrated as part of this project. These technologies may help reduce water treatment costs in the future and might be applied to the extensive brackish water aquifers present in New Mexico and much of the Southwest. Extraction and injection of produced water does not impact freshwater aquifers. "The Department of Energy and the National Energy Technology Laboratory see the enormous potential of this project," said Robert Goldstein, senior technical leader and area manager, water and ecosystems, EPRI. "If commercial-scale application of produced water in power plant cooling systems can be accomplished at SJGS, then many power plants throughout the nation, including the arid Southwest, also could benefit from a similar approach saving millions of gallons of fresh water." Approximately 2,000 to 3,000 acre-feet (AF) of produced water in the San Juan River Basin region has been identified as potentially usable at SJGS. This amount could increase as New Mexico's oil and gas industry increases the number of production facilities in the Four Corners region in the near future. The DOE grant will be part of the ZeroNet initiative, one of the long-term solutions PNM has been exploring to reduce the amount of water used to produce power. The initiative, spearheaded by LANL and EPRI, is designed to create and apply technologies, information, data and decision support tools to help New Mexico manage its water crisis. PNM will serve as the test utility in the initiative. Sen. Pete Domenici's (R-NM) office recently announced that the Senate Energy and Water Development Appropriations Committee, chaired by the senator, has approved $1.5 million in funding for ZeroNet and final funding is pending congressional approval. SJGS uses an average of 22,000 AF of water a year. The plant has rights to 24,200 AF per year — 16,200 AF from the Navajo Reservoir through a U.S. Bureau of Reclamation contract and 8,000 AF in native stream flow from the San Juan River through a contract with BHP Billiton. On average, SJGS requires about three-quarters of a gallon of water to produce one kilowatt-hour. The plant has a water conservation plan in effect, which results in only 6 percent of the total water consumed being discharged to on-site evaporation ponds. Through a series of complex processes, water is reused, some as much as 10 times, before it is ultimately evaporated. PNM is the principal subsidiary of PNM Resources, an energy holding company based in Albuquerque. PNM provides electric utility service to 387,000 customers and natural gas service to 450,000 customers in New Mexico. The company also sells power on the wholesale market in the Western U.S. PNM Resources stock is traded primarily on the NYSE under the symbol PNM. SJGS is a 1,798-megawatt coal-fired power
plant located 15 miles northwest of Farmington, N.M. The plant
is PNM's primary generation source, providing 58 percent of
the power needed by PNM customers. PNM operates the plant
on behalf of the company and eight other owners.
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