Comparing FracFocus and Colorado water source data

Summary: Colorado publishes some data on water sources in the ECMC’s COGIS system. We use those Colorado data to gauge the veracity of the new optional FracFocus water source feature by examining the percentage of produced or recycled water in fracking jobs¹. While there are significant gaps in both data sources, we find that they tell the same story: about 75-85% of fracking jobs are dominated by fresh water and 25-15% by produced/recycled water, with only a small fraction of disclosures with significant mixing. When the two data sets overlap, individual disclosures largely agree.

About a year ago, FracFocus began reporting “water source” data for new disclosures. This optional section allows operating companies to disclose what types of water are used in their fracking jobs: surface water, ground water, or produced water. Such data will be of interest to many stakeholders as there are important implications with these decisions. Open-FF now summaries these data by state.

In our attempt to understand how useful this water source data is, Open-FF has compared it to what is reported in other disclosure systems. One such system is Colorado ECMC’s COGIS database.

COGIS data

The Colorado Oil and Gas Information System (COGIS) provides many details on fracking jobs in the state in a relatively easy-to-access format. For an individual well, details such as precise location and dates, drilling parameters, treatment types and even production are available. Directly related to our water source study, those details also include the total fluid used and, often, the amount of fresh and recycled water used (measured in barrels). For example, the Weld County “Guttersen” well, 05-123-48941, operated by Noble Energy, Inc. report shows us²:

In this data, the “recycled water” measure seems to map directly to the “produced water” measure of FracFocus so we consider them the same. For this study, we downloaded all COGIS disclosures for Colorado wells from 2016 to the present³ and extracted those values from the disclosures. There are over 9,800 wells in this data set.⁴

Reporting in COGIS

If we consider just the COGIS data, reporting of this water source data is relatively high, at least historically:

An eighty percent reporting rate from 2016-2020 seems quite good. But the decline in reporting in more recent years is striking. It may be (at least partially) caused by a lag in reporting; that is, companies report the basics of disclosure and later update the disclosure with other details. However, if that is the sole reason, the lag is 2 – 3 years in many cases. Another possibility is that companies are simply reporting less which would be an unfortunate development.

Percent “Recycled” in COGIS

For those COGIS disclosures reporting water source⁵, the pattern is clear: about 75% of fracking jobs are dominated by fresh water and 25% is dominated by recycled water. Only a small fraction of jobs substantially mix the two.

COGIS to FracFocus comparison

To compare the FracFocus water source data to the COGIS data, we use the percent of fracking fluid that is recycled/produced water. COGIS data does not break down the freshwater category into surface and groundwater components so we must lump all FracFocus freshwater together.

Disclosure Overlap and Consistency

Because FracFocus water source data only began reporting in late 2023 and the COGIS reporting of water source is limited in that period, the overlap between these two data sets is only 144 disclosures.

Nevertheless, comparing individual disclosures that overlap is informative. For about 90% these, the values of recycled/produced water percentages match within a small tolerance⁶. The deviations that occur in those other 10% appear to be when the data entry to FracFocus rounded numbers to either 0 or 100. These differences were no greater than 13%.

Looking at the larger picture for all FracFocus Colorado disclosures that report produced water percentages⁷, we find a similar pattern to the COGIS data. Whereas the COGIS showed a roughly 75:25 ratio of fresh:recycled dominated disclosures, the FracFocus data suggests more of a 85:15 ratio⁸. However, considering the limited number of disclosures that actually overlap in these two data sets, the overall pattern seems robust.

Conclusion

State data provides a useful check on FracFocus data. While it is available from a limited number of states and requires significant work to extract, it allows us to see inconsistencies that would otherwise be invisible.

In the case of the Colorado COGIS data, the FracFocus water source data appear to be consistent to these state disclosures.

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Title art: Becky Mansfield (modified by author)

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1. This post is part of an Open-FF effort to show the errors and omissions of FracFocus as part of our aim to make the data more usable. ↩︎
2. Screenshot from Dec. 29, 2024 of part of the disclosure. Visit this link to see the entire disclosure for this well. ↩︎
3. We used the reported fracking jobs in FracFocus to search the COGIS database. Scraped in the week of Dec. 22, 2024. It is possible that there are other disclosures in COGIS that were not reported in FracFocus that we would miss. ↩︎
4. In some cases, operators report only total water and fresh water but leave recycled water blank. When total water is greater than the fresh water, we have found that the difference (Total – Fresh) maps well onto the “produced water” value of FracFocus. Therefore, we use that calculated value for COGIS “recycled water” when it is not directly reported. ↩︎
5. 7061 disclosures with fracking completion dates between 2016 and the present ↩︎
6. To be within tolerance, the two values must be within one percentage point. ↩︎
7. Which is 480 disclosures. ↩︎
8. This discrepancy may be partially caused by the “Other” category in the FracFocus data that, in this graph, is lumped into the fresh water grouping. ↩︎