Brine Disposal

Like many oil fields, brine was a problem in the Newhall-Potrero field. Brine is salt water not drinkable by humans. For every barrel of crude oil produced nearly two barrels of brine were also being withdrawn. Some oil field operators just discharged the brine on the surface and let it soak into the ground. If the oil field was near the ocean, the brine was sometimes dumped there. Since the Newhall-Potrero field was situated on grazing and potential agricultural land, the dumping of brine on the surface would not be allowed. The field was also not close enough to the ocean to make dumping there economically feasible. Therefore, the best solution was to inject it back into the ground using a disposal well. So, in the early 1950's, Sunray (the current leaseholder)installed a diatomaceous earth filtering system so that (in the beginning) 350 barrels of brine could be injected daily into a disposal well. Like a home pool filter, the diatomaceous earth helps filter out any suspended solids in the brine. Chemicals were also used to stablize the brine. When injected back into the ground, the water needed to be chemically stable and free of any impurities which might plug the underground formations in any way.