Drilling Fluids and Retention Pits

In rural environments, storage pits may be used to hold water. They are typically excavated containment ponds that, based on the local conditions and regulatory requirements, may be lined. Pits can also be used to store additional make-up water for drilling fluids or to store water used in the hydraulic fracturing of wells. 

Water storage pits used to hold water for hydraulic fracturing purposes are typically lined to minimize the loss of water from infiltration. Water storage pits are becoming an important tool in the shale gas industry because the drilling and hydraulic fracturing of these wells often require significant volumes of water as the base fluid for both purposes (Harper, 2008). 

A company involved in developing Texas shale gas offered the following description of a frack job (Franz and Jochen, 2005)  

Shale gas wells are not hard to drill, but they are difficult to complete. 

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