Sea Spring Water

Exploration & Production of Unconventional Groundwater Resources

Water scarcity is a sad fact of life to many regions worldwide, and it looms on the horizon of yet others. While a strong industry focus lies on water management practices or supply options such as seawater desalination and conventional groundwater development (i.e. groundwater development from unconsolidated, shallow aquifers), Sea Spring Water also targets unconventional groundwater resources.

Incorporating leading industrial and scientific knowledge and tools, we explore and develop groundwater in locations where this is often deemed absent or unsustainable, such as offshore paleogroundwater or deep, onshore groundwater.

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Offshore Paleogroundwater

Offshore paleogroundwater was formed during the low sea level stands of the last ice age. Imagine large parts of continental shelfs worldwide where aquifers were formed and recharged. And where water quality has been protected up to current times. With a strong foundation in scientific research, Sea Spring Water is the first company worldwide to explore and develop this fresh to brackish resource.

Offshore Paleogroundwater concept and production rig.

Innovative use of technology from the water and petroleum industries allows development for extended periods at a cost considerably lower than through any means of seawater desalination. And at volumes which make it an interesting option for either small demands or large municipal and industrial demands.

Groundwater recharged onshore may occassionaly flow to submarine strata. A discharge to the sea ("springs") may also exist, but volumes are relatively small and would be best captured onshore. This active, offshore groundwater must not be confused with offshore paleogroundwater (above).

Onshore Unconventional Groundwater

Most groundwater worldwide is developed from unconsolidated, onshore sediments in the uppermost few hundred meters of the subsurface. Despite occurrences of groundwater in other settings, such as deep (500 - 2000 m+) groundwater or fractured and carbonate reservoirs, the water industry is largely unfamiliar with exploring this unconventional onshore groundwater. Actually, most existing unconventional groundwater developments are the result of coincidental discovery, for instance during petroleum exploration.

Sea Spring Water combines leading knowledge and tools from the scientific community and water and oil & gas industries to fundamentally understand genesis and evolution of unconventional groundwater and to systematically explore it.

Why Unconventional Groundwater?

Groundwater development is generally part of a larger water management and supply strategy, in which other supply options, for instance from surface water, exist also. Groundwater does have significant advantages over other supply options:

Development of offshore groundwater becomes particularly interesting when cheap, shallow aquifers onshore have become unsustainable, polluted, or otherwise cause negative environmental effects. In many cases - in addition to exploring more unconventional onshore, groundwater occurrences - only expensive alternatives remain, such as elaborate pipeline & storage facilities or seawater desalination.

Depending on several key parameters, of which groundwater quality & depth, and distance offshore are the most important, one can develop offshore paleogroundwater and realize a significant cost-saving. In addition there are significant operational and environmental benefits too.

Financial Advantages

Lower overall capital & operational cost than seawater desalination
Capacity increase of existing water sources through blending
Possibility of direct use quality

Environmental Advantages (compared to surface water and seawater)

Protected from surface pollution
Little solute load & chemically stable
Constant temperature

Operational Advantages (compared to seawater desalination)

Less brines disposal
Less chemical usage
Less energy required

The documented occurrences of offshore groundwater are enormous and not to be exploited rapidly, while environmental problems related to onshore overexploitation of shallow groundwater, notably land subsidence and coastal salinization, are avoided.

Exploration

Exploration consists of the hydrological analysis of existing data supplemented by newly acquired data, and the development of static and dynamic reservoir models to predict production behaviour and yield.

Our approach is highly systematic, fundamental and multidisciplinary in nature and it incorporates the know-how, methodology and tools of both industrial ánd academic experts. It relies heavily on our know-how in areas of fresh-salt hydrology, coastal hydrology, paleohydrology & - geomorphology, structural geology, tectonics, GIS and in geological and reservoir modelling.

Exploring Offshore Groundwater with Electromagnetics (EM).

New data acquisition relies on understanding the capabilities and limitations of exploration tools to locate and define unconventional groundwater. Together with several key industry and academic parties, we are therefore continuously researching and developing new exploration equipment, most notably offshore EM (electromagnetic) exploration equipment.

Field exploration the conventional way

Production

Where production comes from offshore aquifers or from deep onshore aquifers, conventional water drilling and production practices and techniques are not fully suited. To some degree they must be combined with technologies from mainly the petroleum industry, while maintaining their low - non oil & gas - cost.

Our team’s background in the water and hydrocarbon Exploration & Production field, together with strategic alliances with several main industry players, has resulted in a variety of drilling, production and transportation concepts.

Offshore Groundwater production facility.

Although vertical wells are traditionally the preferred option, the ongoing development of cost effective deviated and horizontal drilling techniques is increasing the production alternatives.

Water Treatment

Groundwater may be fresh to brackish and require anything from basic filtration and disinfection to desalination. Sea Spring Water works together with established water treatment engineering partners to offer the optimal solution.

Brackish Groundwater Utilization
However, it may be smart, if possible, to use the water directly with minimal additional treatment and cost. Although this potential is often undervalued, brackish water has ample utilizations to make it interesting. For instance, it maybe used in biosaline agriculture, landscaping, watering of livestock, or in industry and construction.

An interesting utilization is also as blending water in post-treatment of distilled water, for blending with other water supplies, or in front-end blending in desalination plants. This improves the feed water quality and desalination efficiency, and thus the product water yield.

In conclusion, straightforward desalination, as is done in many seawater desalination plants worldwide, remains possible, and still offers a cost effective water supply solution.

After treatment the water is ready for distribution to the end user.