I know re-opening old fields is being considered here in Kansas....my company is opening a new office in the vicinity of where we predict this oil play to happen.
But, there’s one problem - fracking uses alot of water. Water rights are pretty much spoken for in most of Kansas (and we had drought last summer). So we could never reach the scale of ND in production. I think this is true for lots of places around the world.
ND just happens to have an abundance of water (in certain areas around the river). Our company also has offices in ND, and we a building a raw water line...all it will do is bring water from the river, untreated, to the oil fields...and we’ll charge by the gallon.
So it may not work in the deserts around the world. However, this should not be a problem in many places in Asia, Equatorial Africa, South and Central America.
Can you use Salt water or does it need to be fresh water?
That is often overstated. South Texas is a very dry location and the Eagle Ford tends to require several times as much water to hydro frac as formations like the Bakken. Studies show the massive amount of drilling in that area are using about 1% of the total water use in the area.