How Much Water Does it Take to Grow Oil? Or a Melon?
August 25, 2010
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Circle of Blue -- a longstanding water use publication of the Pacific Institute -- reported this week on the amount of water that goes into keeping Kern County's crude oil flowing. Turns out that 320 gallons are needed to produce one gallon of Kern crude. That pales to what the rest of oil production brings, writes Circle of Blue's Jeremy Miller:
"This is merely the beginning of the oil supply chain. The United States Geological Survey estimates that the lifecycle requirements of extracting, transporting and refining a single barrel of oil - which yields over 40 gallons of various petroleum products - requires 1,850 gallons of water."
Miller continues:
"More surprising, perhaps, is that much of the water used by Kern oil companies to extract 550,000 barrels of crude oil a day comes from the same source that farmers get it: California's network of irrigation projects."
By comparison, the story quotes a Kern water utility official saying that it takes 100 gallons of water to grow a single melon, and 15 gallons for an apple.
Photo Credit: The image accompanying this post was taken by Flickr user Fr Antunes. It was used under Creative Commons license.
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