Prairie Water vAPM 2021: Week 3

Deep Groundwater and Industry Interactions

For our final week of the "Tour through Prairie Water" series, we are showcasing work from two past Masters students. Keegan Jellicoe and Chris Perra both graduated last year, and their research looked into the influence of the oil and gas industry on deep groundwater.

Keegan Jellicoe's work looks at how spatial injection and production rates influence the movement of water in deep aquifers in Alberta and Saskatchewan. In short, obtaining these resources requires moving a lot of water and has the potential to influence how these deep reserves behave. Chris Perra's research investigates how abandoned oil and gas wells influence comingling of aquifers of different ages or water quality. Together, these projects shed light on the roles of deep water reserves in the human-influenced water cycle, of which is an area of active research.