Peak Oil meets Peak Water: Moving towards Unitization of

Shared Groundwater

W. Todd Jarvis

Program in Water Conflict Management and Transformation

“Water is the oil of this century.” Dow Chemical Chair Andrew Liveris,

World Economic Forum, February, 2008

Overview

 Peak Oil versus Peak Water  Unitization Concepts  Examples where it works  Conclusions

Peak Oil

www.almc.army.mil/.../JulAug99/MS406c2.jpg

Hubbert Curve

Peak Water

From Palaniappan and Gleick, 2009

Non-renewable Groundwater

Peak Ecological Water

Oil business terminology Consolidation of all, or a large percentage of royalty or participating interests, in a “pool” as will permit reservoir engineers to plan operation of the pool.

In the case of groundwater “…government-mandated unitization of groundwater … is a solution to excessive access and drawdown … a

single “unit operator” extracts from and develops the reservoir. All other parties share in the net returns as

share holders.” Libecap (2005)

What is Unitization?

Post-Modern Geohydrologic Balance: New Shareholders for Groundwater

Diagram from Ragone (2007)

GW and SW Inflows

GW and SW Outflows Net GW Availability

Pumpage

Water Manufacturing/ Conservation

Contamination Baseflow- Ecosystem

Maintenance

Virtual Water Imports/Exports

Changes in Precipitation

Changes in Land Use &

Cover

Damage to Aquifer Storage?

1992 1994 1995 1996 1993 0

20 40 60 80

100 120 140 160 180 200

Aver

age

Prod

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n (G

PM)

Sn

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Sn

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Rated Well Capacity

From Matyjasik, Yonkee and Jarvis, 2002

Probably the biggest challenge, but not insurmountable

Oil Units – based on subsurface faults, permeability barriers, assured productive limits of reservoir

Diagram from Kumar (2007)

The Boundary Issue

Adaptive mgmt. with new data

Southern Nevada Water vs. UT

Adapted from High Country News, 2009

Nevada Utah Cave Valley Ranch paid $4M by SNWA to not develop water on 1,500 acres

Mississippi vs. Memphis, TN

From Cameron, 2009 Mississippi

Tennessee

Seeking $1Billion in damages

Diagram courtesy of Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation

Unitizing “Oregon’s Oil”?

Washington

Blurring the Boundaries Negotiation

Stage Common

Water Claims

Collaborative Skills

Geographic Scope

Core Motive Influencing

Decision Making

Adversarial Rights Trust-building Nations Institutions

Reflexive Needs Skills-building Watersheds Information

Integrative Benefits Consensus-building

“Benefit-sheds”

Incentives

Action Equity Capacity-building

Region Identity

Adapted from Jarvis and Wolf, in review

The real benefit is in the emerging use of managed recharge applications – i.e., Kumamoto, Japan

Well interference issues and costs minimized – SNWA vs. Utah and the recent $4Million “payoff”

Increase private investment in ASR and non-renewable groundwater - Similar to secondary and tertiary oil recovery operations

May promote groundwater exploration and development on federal lands because of success of oil unitization

Benefits of Unitization?

Conclusions  Peak Water can learn from Peak Oil

 Unitization of groundwater is a pro-market approach to decreasing conflict over water resources and increasing water availability.

 Unitization of groundwater may lessen damage to the storativity of hard rock aquifers.

 Unitization concepts are currently applied nationally and internationally for groundwater

exploitation and managed recharge.

Thank you for your attention.