Water Use Data for Hydraulic Fracturing Treatments in and near the Williston Basin, United States, 2000-2015

Water used for hydraulic fracturing treatments in and near the Williston Basin during 2000-2015, was estimated using data reported in IHS Markit (TM) (2016). Hydraulic fracturing treatment data from IHS Markit (TM) (2016) may include volumes in a variety of measurement units, and they may include multiple treatments per well. All listed treatments within the study area were converted to gallons and summed on a per-well basis, discounting any treatments for which the specified measurement units were unclear (for example, "sacks", or "feet"), which were minor. Of 3,734,380 treatments listed within the study area during the timeframe of interest, 0.7% (26,373 records) were not included. For each well, the date listed as the well completion date (typically the date of final preparation of the well for petroleum production) was considered to be the date of the water consumption. Listings for the actual treatment date are incomplete in the IHS Markit (TM) (2016) database, but generally the completion date is within a few days, or at most months, of the actual treatment date. The per-well treatment volumes were then aggregated via summation to a 1-mile grid using ArcGIS functions. The annual aggregated hydraulic fracturing treatment data were exported as annual GeoTIFF images with a resolution of 1 square mile per pixel and bundled into a TAR archive file. This data is not part of the USGS Aggregated Water Use Database (AWUDS) or the National Water Information System (NWIS).