![\"James](\"https:\/\/scadametrics.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/IMG_0987-1-150x150.jpeg\")
Jim ‘Slim’ Mimlitz, SCADAmetrics<\/p><\/div>North Dakota! — a pheasant hunter’s paradise and home to the hottest oil and gas find in North America — and also a region whose control, automation and telemetry needs are served by Preferred Controls of Albany MN and Minot ND.\u00a0 Preferred Controls<\/a>, an integrator of custom control systems, serves a broad spectrum of clients throughout the Northern Plains States.<\/p>\n Typical Scene in the Bakken Formation Oil & Gas Fields – In the Vicinity of Williston ND.<\/p><\/div>\n In the shale oil and gas fields of North Dakota, and throughout the United States in general, hydraulic fracturing (aka “fracking”) technology<\/a> is being applied to increase the productivity of new and old wells alike.\u00a0 In a nutshell, rock at the wellbore\u00a0is fractured by\u00a0the injection of\u00a0a high-pressure cocktail of water, sand, and chemicals — creating cracks in the rock formations through which the petroleum, gas, and brine will flow more freely to the surface.<\/p>\n Each fracking operation consumes a significant amount of water — between 1.2 and 5 million gallons of water per frac — at a typical cost of $21K-$90K\u00a0 in water alone.\u00a0 In order to minimize transportation costs, the water is generally purchased from a source as close to the wellhead as possible.\u00a0 The frac water seller is often a nearby landowner with a lake or well.\u00a0 In every case, each frac water source must be permitted, metered, and monitored by the state.<\/p>\n Lake Pump, Meter, and Preferred Controls AMR Unit.<\/p><\/div>\n In order to help keep the water seller in compliance with its state-issued permit, Preferred Controls\u00a0has developed a turnkey AMR (Automatic Meter Reading)\u00a0system that can be efficiently deployed to any frac water source (lake or well) and to any location in the world.<\/p>\n Preferred Controls Modular AMR Unit.<\/p><\/div>\n This modular, portable hardware consists mainly\u00a0of:<\/p>\n Optionally, and in certain cases, Preferred Controls\u00a0can integrate with a customer-provided flow meter, as well.<\/p>\n At the server, Preferred Controls has developed sophisticated software that retrieves the metering data from the satellite network, stores the data within a database, and provides digital reports to both the frac water seller and the\u00a0state permitting agency.\u00a0 Because the hardware of this AMR system is modular and portable, it can be re-deployed at new permitted water sources, close to the active fracking.<\/p>\n Satellite versus Cellular<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n While visiting various sites, I learned that\u00a0selection of satellite communications was an absolute necessity, as the frac water source locations usually had no (or weak)\u00a0cellular signal available.\u00a0 Extraterrestrial satellite service, as provided by the Iridium satellite network, is consistently available anywhere with a clear path to the sky above\u00a0— in other words, virtually anywhere in the world.<\/p>\n Satellite-Based AMR System.<\/p><\/div>\n Metering Technology<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n Preferred Controls has offered the flexibility to accommodate customer-provided water meters, in addition to providing\u00a0a water meter\u00a0as part of\u00a0a complete turnkey package.\u00a0 However, I cannot stress enough that frac water sellers should consider using only\u00a0new and approved meters.\u00a0 Why?\u00a0 Because, a water meter is effectively a “cash register” for water.\u00a0 And a meter whose accuracy falls within 5-10% error, or a meter that does not offer an encoder-signal output — no matter how inexpensive — will quickly become a liability to the water seller.\u00a0 The frac water seller should contemplate whether\u00a0a\u00a05-10% underpayment for each water sale is acceptable.\u00a0 Consider this example: A single fracking purchase of 3 million gallons at $18 per 1KGal run through a 10% accurate flow meter could result in up to\u00a0$5,400 in lost revenue on that single purchase alone.\u00a0 And that loss does not even factor in the increased maintenance\u00a0costs of a low-end mechanical meter.<\/p>\n For all the above reasons, it is wise to invest in an accurate and compatible\u00a0flow meter up-front.\u00a0 For lake and well water, the gold standard for accuracy is a magnetic flow meter<\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0Unlike mechanical turbine or propeller meters,\u00a0a 100% solid-state magnetic flow meter\u00a0has no moving parts\u00a0whose movement\u00a0could be hindered by solids — such as those suspended in lake and well water.\u00a0 The model that we generally recommend provides an overall\u00a0accuracy of 0.4%.\u00a0\u00a0And no matter how accurate\u00a0the installed flow meter, limited benefit will be yielded without proper communication compatibility.\u00a0 For this reason, only magnetic flow meters that are equipped with an encoder-signal output (not pulse) are recommended.\u00a0\u00a0Encoder technology guarantees that the meter totalization (the number that is visually displayed on the meter’s register) will be an exact match to the number that is reported to the permitting authority.<\/p>\n Magnetic Flow Meter with 0.4% Accuracy, Equipped with an Encoder Signal Output for Revenue-Grade Data Transfer.<\/p><\/div>\n Conclusions<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n This visit to North Dakota was an educational experience, and I was appreciative of the opportunity afforded by Pete Desautel and the good people at Preferred Controls.\u00a0 They have designed an efficient, reliable, and modular automatic meter reading system that can be deployed to\u00a0remote frac water source locations.\u00a0\u00a0The system was proven\u00a0at the\u00a0Bakken Formation Oil Fields of North Dakota; but\u00a0— due to its portability and satellite-based communications — could be deployed without modification\u00a0to any location in the world.\u00a0 It could also be used to meter brine disposal injection well operations.<\/p>\n Are you interested in learning more about how\u00a0the Preferred Controls Frac Water AMR system could be deployed to your frac water source or brine disposal system?\u00a0 Give Pete Desautel at Preferred Controls a call (cell: 320.224.1217), or give\u00a0us a call — We’ll be glad to discuss your needs in detail.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" North Dakota! — a pheasant hunter’s paradise and home to the hottest oil and gas find in North America — and also a region whose control, automation and telemetry needs are served by Preferred Controls of Albany MN and Minot ND.\u00a0 Preferred Controls, an integrator of custom control systems, serves a broad spectrum of clients …<\/span> Read More →<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":748,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4,10],"tags":[120,121,115,117,118,116,119],"class_list":["post-728","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-applications","category-meteringtechnology","category-satellite-communications","tag-amr","tag-brine-disposal","tag-frac","tag-frac-water","tag-frac-water-metering","tag-fracking","tag-satellite-communications"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/scadametrics.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/728","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/scadametrics.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/scadametrics.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scadametrics.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scadametrics.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=728"}],"version-history":[{"count":52,"href":"https:\/\/scadametrics.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/728\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2965,"href":"https:\/\/scadametrics.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/728\/revisions\/2965"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scadametrics.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/748"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/scadametrics.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=728"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scadametrics.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=728"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scadametrics.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=728"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Bakken](\"https:\/\/scadametrics.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/Oil_Well_001s-1024x647.jpg\")
<\/a>![\"Lake](\"https:\/\/scadametrics.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/Lake_Pump_001s-300x225.jpg\")
<\/a>![\"Preferred](\"https:\/\/scadametrics.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/AMR_Panel_001s-300x225.jpg\")
<\/a>\n
![\"Satellite-Based](\"https:\/\/scadametrics.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/Satellite_Topology_01s-300x213.jpg\")
<\/a>![\"Cash_Register_001\"](\"https:\/\/scadametrics.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/Cash_Register_001-300x265.gif\")
<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0 ![\"Dollar_Sign_001\"](\"https:\/\/scadametrics.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/Dollar_Sign_001-172x300.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nWater Meter = Cash Register for Water.<\/em>\nWhat Level of Inaccuracy Is Acceptable At Your Cash Register?<\/em><\/pre>\n
![\"Magnetic](\"https:\/\/scadametrics.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/hbmag.jpg\")
<\/a>