Oil & Gas / Produced Water in Vancouver, British Columbia

Oil and water separate on their own, given time. The entire discipline of oil and gas wastewater treatment exists because nobody in the industry has that time, and because the last few percent of oil refuses to leave without help. Free oil rises and skims easily. Dispersed droplets need coalescing plates or gas flotation. Emulsified oil, stabilized by production chemicals and shear from pumps, needs chemistry to break before any mechanical device can touch it. Knowing which fraction dominates your stream decides the equipment, which is why we ask for an oil-in-water analysis before we quote anything.

Applications across the value chain

The applications span the value chain. Upstream, produced water from Alberta and Saskatchewan wells carries oil, solids and dissolved salts, and is treated for reinjection, disposal, or reuse in waterfloods, where oil carryover fouls injection formations. Midstream terminals and truck washouts generate slop oil and tank bottoms. Downstream, refineries run API separators as the first line, followed by dissolved gas or air flotation ahead of biological treatment. Gas plants add their own stream: amine and glycol wastes that behave nothing like produced water and should never be mixed with it.

Separators built to API 421

Our equipment for this sector includes API oil water separator packages built to the API 421 gravity-separation design method, corrugated and inclined plate coalescing separators for tighter footprints, induced and dissolved gas flotation units, skimmer systems, and coalescing filter vessels for final polishing where discharge or reinjection specs demand single-digit oil concentrations. For remote batteries and early-production facilities the package arrives skid-mounted and winterized.

Limits differ by regulator

Alberta Energy Regulator directives, Saskatchewan disposal rules and federal offshore regulations each define oil-in-water limits differently, so we design against your specific approval rather than a generic number.

Where your water goes next

Send us the analysis, the flow range and the destination of the water, whether that is disposal well, waterflood or surface discharge. The proposal that comes back will name the separation stages, the expected outlet quality at each, and the turndown behaviour, because oilfield flows never stay at design point for long. A practical note on solids: produced sand and fines shorten the life of every separation stage, so where the well history shows sand production we put hydrocyclones or filtration ahead of the separator rather than letting the API vessel become a settling basin.