Pacific Rubiales Energy Corp. commissions TEDAGUA to build and operate a desalination plant on its oil fields in Colombia

TEDAGUA will build a plant to treat brine from oil extraction at the Rubiales field near Puerto Gaitán in the Meta district of Colombia, and will operate the plant for a period of ten years. The contract, for a total of nearly 100 million dollars (approximately 78 million euros), will be implemented for a subsidiary of the Pacific Rubiales Energy Corp. group.

The plant will produce 500,000 barrels a day (79,500 m3/day). The raw water, which comes directly from oil production, will be treated by reverse osmosis for use in agricultural and forestry irrigation. The project is important for the environment because it avoids the need for costly reinjection of the water into the oil wells.

The process designed by TEDAGUA consists basically of a pre-treatment phase with various preliminary treatment systems prior to the application of a high-recovery (90%) reverse osmosis process and a sludge separation process which will produce water perfectly suitable for use from the point of view of the environment.

In the words of Ronald Pantin, CEO of Pacific Rubiales, “this is an interesting win-win project for Pacific Rubiales that provides an innovative, sustainable and low-cost alternative for the management of the water generated by the Rubiales oil fields, and also represents the establishment of a new green industry that benefits the region”.