Range Resources Corp. has begun recycling all of the wastewater it produces at its natural gas drilling operations in Washington County, PA, an executive said Tuesday.

Although water recycling isn’t the only long-term water treatment option to reduce its wastewater from gas drilling, the recycling program is helping to “lower drilling costs, reduce consumptive water needs by 25% and lessen local truck traffic,” COO Jeff Ventura told delegates at Hart’s Developing Unconventional Gas Conference in Pittsburgh.

Through the recycling effort, which recycles flowback water and produced water “significantly,” Range has reduced the water it uses by about one million gallons per horizontal well, said Ventura. He told delegates that the company has arrangements in place from approved water source and disposal facilities that cover the next “several years.”

The water recycling project also may enable Range to meet more stringent state water standards, Ventura noted.

The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) has proposed water quality discharge standards that, if enacted, would take effect in 2011.

Under the proposed rules, which would affect Pennsylvania gas producers operating in the Marcellus Shale, all industrial water discharges would have to contain less than 500 parts per million of total dissolved solids. According to the DEP, wastewater from gas and oil production is expected to reach about nine million gallons/day this year, increasing to 16 million gallons/day in 2010 and to 19 million gallons/day in 2011.

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