WATER IS NOT JUST A UTILITY

IN ENERGY PROJECTS AND WELL CONSTRUCTION, IT IS PART OF THE SYSTEM

From the aquifer to the end of the asset's life: source, abstraction, treatment, infrastructure, well construction, integrity, monitoring, and lifecycle.

Water usually goes on the project list as a utility, next to power and communications. The label is convenient, and it is incomplete.

In energy projects, water can be a resource, a process fluid, a heat carrier, a drilling-fluid ingredient, cement mix water, the base of a completion brine, an injection medium, a waste stream or part of the reservoir itself. It can arrive from a shallow aquifer, a deeper confined aquifer, a river, a municipal network, the sea, a recycling plant, or the produced-water stream of the same field. From there it may become potable water, cooling water, firewater, drilling-fluid makeup, cement mix water, completion brine, stimulation fluid, hydrotest water, injection water, geothermal fluid or wastewater.

Those services are not interchangeable. Each one carries its own combination of chemistry, pressure, temperature, solids, dissolved gases, microorganisms, corrosion mechanisms, and consequences when something goes wrong. That is why a water system can meet its hydraulic design and still fail its purpose. A pipe can have the right diameter and the wrong material. A well can deliver the required rate while drawing on the aquifer faster, or differently, than the project assumed. A hydrotest can reach its pressure and leave behind chemistry that becomes an integrity problem later. A drilling program can have every piece of equipment on location and still lose performance because the water in the fluid system is not the water used to qualify it.

So the engineering question is not only whether the system can move enough water. It is where the water comes from, what happens to the source when we take it, what condition the water has to be in when it arrives, and whether the whole system stays fit for service for as long as the asset has to work.

That question has a natural order, and this article follows it (Figure 1): source and aquifer, abstraction, treatment, infrastructure, process and well construction, integrity, monitoring and lifecycle.

Figure 1. Water as part of the system

1. Source and aquifer: the system starts before the wellhead

For a project supplied by groundwater, the infrastructure does not begin at the wellhead. It begins in the aquifer.

A water well is not a tank buried underground. It is a hydraulic connection to a geological system that stores water, transmits it, receives recharge and discharges it somewhere else: to a stream, a spring, a wetland or another aquifer. When pumping starts, the well changes that system.

Depth alone tells us very little. There is no universal depth at which a well stops being shallow and becomes deep in hydrogeological terms. What matters is the architecture of the aquifer: whether the well produces from an unconfined aquifer connected to recent recharge or from a confined unit separated by lower-permeability layers, where the recharge area is, how old the water is, and which other aquifers, streams, or wetlands are hydraulically connected to the producing interval.

The USGS puts the age difference plainly. In shallow, unconfined aquifers with high recharge, groundwater is often only a few decades old. Where recharge is low, where the aquifer is very thick, or where units are separated by confining layers, it can be thousands of years old, and age generally increases with depth and with distance from the recharge area. Figure 2 shows how that plays out in a simple two-aquifer setting.

That creates a distinction that is easy to miss from the surface. A deep well can show a large water column and excellent initial productivity while producing water that is replenished very slowly. A shallow aquifer can recharge quickly and still be far more exposed to drought, seasonal swings, contamination, and competition with surface water. Depth changes the problem. It does not remove it.

Figure 2. Source and aquifer

In Colombia, the first constraint is knowledge. Presenting the Estudio Nacional del Agua 2022, still the latest published edition while IDEAM prepares the 2026 study, the Ministry of Environment noted that 78% of the territory could make use of groundwater, but only 15% of the country's aquifer systems are known. The national water supply regulation reflects that uncertainty. The RAS, Resolución 0330 of 2017 as amended by Resolución 0799 of 2021, requires groundwater projects to develop the hydrogeological basis needed to select the source and exploration point. Where an adequate hydrogeological model is not available, that basis includes available geoelectrical information and at least three vertical electrical soundings, or another applicable geophysical method, to define the exploration point. Exploratory drilling then confirms whether the water is available. At PES we make that a firm rule on every project: no proposal without a geoelectrical study, and no drilling without the permit from the regional environmental authority. We prefer electrical resistivity tomography to simple vertical soundings, and that preference is our own technical criterion, not a regulatory requirement. The permit itself rests on the complete technical submission, of which the geophysics is one part.

Photo 1. Electrical resistivity tomography before drilling: the electrode line laid across the site (left) and the acquisition unit (right)

2. Abstraction: recharge is not the same as water available to pump

IDEAM defines aquifer recharge as the net entry of water into the ground over a period of time from precipitation that infiltrates, after evaporation and subsurface runoff, and reaches the aquifers. The definition is useful. The mistake usually comes next: comparing annual abstraction with estimated annual recharge and concluding that anything below recharge is sustainable.

Hydrogeology does not work that way. The USGS has explained for decades that the water pumped from a well comes first from aquifer storage. Water levels fall around the well, and a cone of depression forms and grows. Over time, pumping can capture groundwater that would otherwise have discharged to a stream, spring, or wetland, can induce additional recharge, and, where the systems are hydraulically connected, can induce infiltration from a river into the aquifer (Figure 3). In the USGS's own words, groundwater and surface water are a single resource.

That is why a project can pump at a rate lower than regional recharge and still cause an unacceptable local decline, interfere with neighboring users, or reduce the flow of a stream that matters. And it is why a well next to a river can end up being supplied partly by that river, so that what looks like a groundwater supply is also a surface-water withdrawal.

Figure 3. Abstraction

The pumping test has a precise role in all this. It provides the measured relationship between discharge, drawdown and recovery, and helps quantify specific capacity, aquifer response and potential interference with nearby wells. It does not, by itself, establish a long-term sustainable abstraction rate.

Borehole logs run in the pilot hole, and the hydrogeological interpretation define the producing intervals, the completion and a preliminary selection of the production pump, which has to be specified before the well is cased. Once the well is completed, public-supply specifications commonly call for a temporary test pump able to run above the design rate, so the step-drawdown and constant-rate tests show how the well behaves beyond its intended duty. Those results provide the measured design flow, pumping water level, drawdown, and total dynamic head that confirm or adjust the permanent pump, and they support the concession process. Where the client or the inspector prefers to test with the permanent pump, the test is still valid for the concession, but it cannot take the well beyond the design rate.

The Colombian framework follows the same logic. Decreto 1076 of 2015, which compiles Decreto 1541 of 1978, lists industrial use, mining, oil production and injection for geothermal generation among the uses that require a water concession. As ANLA describes the groundwater exploration permit, the application has to state the drilling system and work plan, the equipment, the hydrogeological characteristics of the area, and the other groundwater users nearby, and the pumping test has to be supervised by an official of the authority. The exploration permit authorizes the exploration works, but it does not grant the right to abstract. The results of the supervised pumping test and the as-built technical information then support a separate concession process, where the abstraction conditions are set. In the projects we have handled, the authority defined the authorized rate only after the test had confirmed the drawdown. For environmental studies, ANLA's 2026 groundwater modeling guide asks for the geometry and hydraulic properties of the aquifers, piezometric levels, flow directions and gradients, the delineation of recharge, transit and discharge zones, and an inventory of groundwater points. The Ministry's National Groundwater Program sets out to strengthen monitoring and to prevent contamination and overexploitation.

That is more than paperwork. It reflects the physical reality: a well cannot be evaluated apart from the aquifer it is connected to. A productive well and a sustainable groundwater development are not the same engineering result.

3. Treatment: the specification follows the service

Once the water is out of the ground, the next mistake is to treat it as a single fluid. A potable network is not a produced-water system. A cooling loop is not an injection system. A firewater ring is not the water used to build a drilling fluid or a cement slurry. Geothermal production and reinjection bring their own thermal, scaling, chemical and materials envelope.

The useful starting point is not the word water. It is the consequence of getting the water wrong in each service.

For potable service, the concern is public health and the safety of the materials in contact with the water. For drilling-fluid makeup, it is the performance of the fluid system. For cement mixing, it is repeatability between the qualified slurry and the one pumped in the field. For completion and workover brines, it includes density, solids, crystallization, corrosion, and compatibility with the formation. For hydrotesting, the question continues after the test, because residual water stays in the system. For injection, suspended solids, chemistry, dissolved gases, and microorganisms can affect injectivity, scaling, and integrity. For produced water, salts, hydrocarbons, solids, and microbial activity change both the treatment and the materials. For geothermal fluids, temperature, scaling, and reinjection compatibility become central to long-term performance. Table 1 summarizes what each service has to protect and the reference this article cites for it.

Table 1. The service decides the specification

Treatment should take the water to the specification its end use requires, no further and no less. Treating every service to potable quality can add cost without adding value. Treating to the wrong specification creates a different problem, one that often shows up months later and somewhere else.

Standards follow the same logic. For drinking water, AWWA maintains the reference set and issued its 200th standard in February 2026, covering areas from source development and treatment to storage and distribution. NSF/ANSI/CAN 61, in its 2025 edition, sets health-effects requirements for materials and components in contact with drinking water. In Colombia, the quality requirements for water for human consumption are those of Resolución 2115 of 2007, still the reference in force. Those requirements are essential wherever people drink the water. But potable certification does not establish fitness for corrosive brine, geothermal service, produced water, cyclic high-pressure duty, or an oilfield fluid system. A product can meet one standard perfectly and still be the wrong choice for another service.

4. Infrastructure: hydraulic capacity is only one design variable

Water systems are usually sized on flow, storage, and pressure. Those variables are necessary, and they are not sufficient. A system can deliver the required flow and still be exposed to pressure transients, dead legs, solids deposition, contamination, corrosion, poor drainability, difficult maintenance, or loss of quality during storage.

Material selection has to follow the fluid. Carbon steel, stainless steel, polyethylene, PVC, CPVC, fiberglass systems such as GRE and GRP, and lined systems can all be right in one application and wrong in another. Pressure rating and purchase price are only part of the decision. The selection basis may need to cover chlorides, dissolved gases, pH, temperature, operating and transient pressure, solids, velocity, erosion, microbial activity, the joining system, the external environment, inspection access, the repair philosophy, and the required service life. For process piping, ASME B31.3 sets requirements for materials, design, fabrication, assembly, examination, inspection, and testing across a broad range of fluids.

Microbiologically influenced corrosion shows why labels can be dangerous. AMPP lists MIC in soils, freshwater, seawater, crude oil, fuels, and process chemicals, and notes that a suspected case usually has to be confirmed through biological, chemical, metallurgical, and operational lines of evidence. Finding microorganisms in a sample is the start of a diagnosis, not the end of it.

The same thinking applies upstream of the pump. A groundwater supply can meet today's demand while levels decline year after year. Several wells that are acceptable on their own can interfere with each other when their cones of depression overlap. Pumping in a confined aquifer can produce pressure responses over a wider area than the well footprint suggests. A shallow well field can change its relationship with a nearby stream. The design basis has to cover more than the steady-state number on the process flow diagram: startup, shutdown, seasonal variation, standby, testing, abnormal conditions, maintenance, and the long-term response of the source.

5. Process and well construction: where water meets the wellbore

A water well is an engineered completion

At PES we say it simply: we do not drill a hole, we build a well. The parallels with oil and gas well construction are closer than they look. A groundwater well also has to connect selectively with the intended formation while isolating other intervals and preventing unwanted communication between them. Depth, casing, screen interval and slot size, filter pack, annular seals, drilling method, development and pumping equipment all shape the result. A poorly completed well can produce sand, mix waters of different quality, open a pathway between aquifers, or fall short of what the formation could deliver.

Photo 2. PES drilling unit on location (left) and the electric submersible pump (ESP) with its discharge column being run into the well (right)

ANSI/AWWA A100-20 sets minimum requirements for vertical water supply wells, primarily for municipal and industrial use, and covers well construction, filter pack, development, disinfection, grouting and sealing, and performance testing. It remains the current edition while AWWA works on its revision, which closed public comment in April 2026. The completion has two jobs, shown in Figure 4: to produce the water the project needs, and to preserve the integrity of the groundwater system it crosses. The second job is the one that tends to be underestimated.

Figure 4. Well construction

Water in oil, gas and geothermal well construction

In an oil, gas or geothermal well, water stops being a utility quickly. It becomes an input to well delivery (Figure 5), affecting drilling-fluid preparation, completion brines, cement mixing, stimulation, displacements, pressure testing and surface fluid handling.

Figure 5. Water in oil, gas and geothermal well construction

API RP 13B-1 covers the testing of water-based drilling fluids. API RP 13J covers the testing of heavy brines used in drilling, completion, fracturing and workover, including their physical properties and potential contaminants. API RP 10B-2 covers the testing of well cements under simulated well conditions. The practical point follows from all three: the water actually used on location is not an invisible ingredient. If its chemistry changes, fluid behavior can change. If a brine drifts from its intended composition, its density, crystallization, and corrosion behavior can change. If the cement was qualified with one water source and the field uses another with materially different chemistry, the equivalence between the laboratory slurry and the field slurry deserves verification. Not every difference causes a failure. Every material difference deserves to be understood.

Photo 3. Mud pump and circulating lines on a PES drilling unit: the water that enters this circuit becomes part of the fluid system

MPD, UBD and UBCTD: fluid quality and pressure control meet at the well

The relationship tightens when the pressure window is narrow. In MPD, UBD and UBCTD, pressure management depends on knowing exactly what is circulating. Density, gas fraction, solids loading, rheology, salinity, and temperature all influence hydraulics and pressure response; the subject API RP 13D addresses drilling-fluid rheology and hydraulics (Figure 6). Water is not always the primary circulating phase, but when it is part of the active fluid system, its properties are part of the operating model.

Figure 6. MPD, UBD and UBCTD circulation

Water logistics, fluid quality, and pressure-control planning cannot always run as separate workstreams. They meet at the well. A support system becomes critical the moment its variability reaches the wellbore.

Photo 4. Oil and gas well construction: a drilling rig on location (left) and a coiled tubing drilling unit with the flare lit (right)

6. Integrity: commissioning and traceability

A water system is not proven because construction is complete. It is proven when commissioning shows that the installed system behaves as the design assumed. That can mean flushing, pressure and leak testing, disinfection where it applies, chemical conditioning, instrument calibration, pump verification, valve function testing, laboratory sampling, integrity baselines, and material traceability.

This is where small deviations surface. A gasket substituted during construction. A low point that does not drain. A dead leg that was not obvious on the drawing. Debris left in the line. A pump running away from its duty point. An instrument that reads correctly at rest and responds poorly in a transient. A water analysis that no longer matches the design basis. Commissioning is not administrative closure. It is the first real comparison between the engineered system and the physical one.

Photo 5. Completed water well and site handover: wellhead with discharge line, flow meter and valve on its concrete pad (top left), pump control panel (top right), the location at the end of the job (bottom left) and the same area leveled and restored for handover (bottom right)

Certification belongs to the same chain. As NSF's Nasrin Kashefi described in WaterWorld, certification under NSF/ANSI/CAN 61 involves a review of the product formulation, on-site audits of the production facilities, sample collection and laboratory testing, and continuing surveillance rather than a one-time test. The lesson reaches well beyond drinking water. If the specified material changes, an elastomer is substituted, the liner or the joining system changes, or the project switches water source, the engineering basis may have changed too. Not every substitution should be rejected. Every relevant substitution should be visible. Risk usually enters quietly, when an assumption changes, and nobody notices that it changed.

7. Monitoring: detecting change before it becomes failure

The strongest systems are designed with deterioration in mind. For a groundwater supply, that means a baseline of static and pumping levels, well performance, water quality, and aquifer response, recorded from the start. For piping and process equipment, it can mean corrosion monitoring, pressure and flow trending, microbiological surveillance, solids monitoring, inspection, coating assessment, cathodic protection, or leak detection.

For wells, monitoring is what allows causes to be told apart. A drop in productivity can come from the pump, the completion, plugging, scaling, interference from a neighboring well, or the aquifer itself responding to abstraction. Without a baseline, those look the same. With a good baseline, they become much easier to separate.

Photo 6. Well maintenance sequence, left to right: the submersible pump pulled with the drilling unit, the pump, motor, and cable inspected at surface, the casing as seen by the downhole camera, and the pump run back in with the cable strapped to the column and a guide at the casing head

8. Lifecycle: integrity has to be designed in early

In oil and gas, ISO 16530-1:2017 treats well integrity as a matter of lifecycle governance, from design and construction through operation, intervention and abandonment. ISO is revising it as a single standard, ISO 16530, which is still at draft stage, so the 2017 edition remains the one in force. Water infrastructure deserves the same view. The assets are different, and the principle is the same: if integrity is going to matter later, it has to be designed earlier.

Six questions before calling water a utility

1.     Where does the water actually come from: surface water, a municipal network, a shallow aquifer, a deep aquifer, seawater, recycled water, or produced water?

2.     If it is groundwater, which aquifer is being captured, how does it recharge and discharge, and what do pumping, drawdown, and recovery tell us, and what do they not tell us?

3.     What specification does the downstream operation need? Flow and pressure are not enough. Chemistry, solids, microorganisms, gases, temperature, and compatibility can matter just as much.

4.     Are the well, piping, storage, and treatment materials fit for the whole operating envelope, including startup, shutdown, standby, transients, and upsets?

5.     What proves that the installed system still matches the design basis: certification, testing, water analysis, inspection, commissioning records, and traceability?

6.     How will change be detected before it becomes failure: water levels, aquifer response, corrosion, water quality, well performance, inspection and defined response limits?

If those answers are weak, a bigger pump or a bigger pipe will not solve the problem.

Bottom line

Water infrastructure should not be treated as secondary just because water is familiar. The system begins before the pump, in the river, aquifer, network, or process stream the water is taken from.

For groundwater, that means accepting something that is hard to see from the surface: a well does not create water; it changes where water flows. A shallow well can affect a nearby stream. A deep well can draw on water that took centuries or millennia to reach the aquifer. A high initial rate does not prove sustainable abstraction, and recharge is not automatically the same as what can be pumped.

Once the water enters an energy project, a second chain begins. Its quality can affect drilling fluids, cement, brines, corrosion, injection, and geothermal performance. Its availability can control execution. Its infrastructure can become a production constraint. Its chemistry can become an integrity issue.

The cheapest pipe is not necessarily the cheapest water system. The highest-producing water well is not necessarily the best groundwater development. And the cheapest water supply is not necessarily the cheapest project.

For well construction, the question is direct: does the water arriving at the wellsite still match the assumptions used to design the operation? For groundwater development, the question is just as important: does the aquifer response still match the assumptions used to justify the abstraction? If either answer is uncertain, water is no longer a utility. It is part of the project's technical risk.

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