Peak Oil meets Peak Water:
Moving towards Unitization of
Shared Groundwater
“Water is the oil of this century.”
Dow Chemical Chair Andrew Liveris,
World Economic Forum, February, 2008
W. Todd Jarvis
Program in Water
Conflict Management and
Transformation

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

Peak Oil
Hubbert Curve
www.almc.army.mil/.../JulAug99/MS406c2.jpg

Peak Water
Non-renewable Groundwater
Peak Ecological Water
From Palaniappan and Gleick, 2009

What is Unitization?
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)

Post-Modern Geohydrologic Balance:
New Shareholders for Groundwater
Changes in Changes in
Precipitation Land Use &
Cover Pumpage
Virtual Water
Imports/Exports
Water
Manufacturing/
Conservation
Baseflow-
Contamination Ecosystem
Maintenance
GW and SW GW and SW
Inflows Net GW Availability Outflows
Diagram from Ragone (2007)

Damage to Aquifer Storage?
200
180
Rated Well Capacity
Average Production (GPM)
160
140
120
100
Snowmelt
Snowmelt
Snowmelt
80
Snowmelt
Snowmelt
60
40
20
0
1992 1993 1994 1995 1996
From Matyjasik, Yonkee and Jarvis, 2002

The Boundary Issue
Probably the biggest challenge, but not insurmountable
Oil Units – based on subsurface faults, permeability
barriers, assured productive limits of reservoir
Adaptive mgmt.
with new data
Diagram from Kumar (2007)

Southern Nevada Water vs. UT
Nevada Utah
Cave Valley Ranch paid $4M
by SNWA to not develop
water on 1,500 acres
Adapted from High Country News, 2009

Mississippi vs. Memphis, TN
Seeking $1Billion in damages
Tennessee
Mississippi
From Cameron, 2009

Unitizing “Oregon’s Oil”?
Washington
Diagram courtesy of Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation

Blurring the Boundaries
Negotiation Common Collaborative Geographic Core Motive
Stage Water Skills Scope Influencing
Claims Decision
Making
Adversarial Rights Trust-building Nations Institutions
Reflexive Needs Skills-building Watersheds Information
Integrative Benefits Consensus- “Benefit- Incentives
building sheds”
Action Equity Capacity- Region Identity
building
Adapted from Jarvis and Wolf, in review

Benefits of Unitization?
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

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.