Assessing REE Concentrations in Geothermal and Oil and Gas Produced Waters: A Potential Domestic Source of Strategic Mineral Commodities

The project team collected and analyzed 224 water samples and 101 matching rock samples. INL's improved method of measuring aqueous REEs allows study of samples previously thought too volume limited to measure.

The study found that aqueous REEs occur at trace levels in all analyzed samples, and sometimes exceed ocean REE concentrations by a factor of 1,000. No significant predictive relationship to lithology, reservoir temperature, nor salinity was discovered, but aqueous REE concentration appears spatially controlled.

Future work is needed to find the spatially-dependent variable that controls aqueous REE concentration.

Data e Risorse

Campo Valore
accessLevel public
bureauCode {019:20}
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dataQuality true
identifier https://data.openei.org/submissions/3781
issued 2019-03-08T07:00:00Z
landingPage https://gdr.openei.org/submissions/1125
license https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
modified 2019-10-15T02:43:51Z
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programCode {019:006}
projectLead Josh Mengers
projectNumber EE0007603
projectTitle Assessing rare earth element concentrations in geothermal and oil and gas produced waters: A potential domestic source of strategic mineral commodities
publisher University of Wyoming
resource-type Dataset
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Gruppi
  • AmeriGEOSS
  • National Provider
  • North America
Tag
  • amerigeo
  • amerigeoss
  • aqueous
  • chemistry
  • ckan
  • commodity
  • concentration
  • coproduced
  • energy
  • geo
  • geochemistry
  • geoss
  • geothermal
  • mineral
  • national
  • north-america
  • oil-and-gas
  • produced-fluid
  • produced-water
  • rare-earth-elements
  • recovery
  • ree
  • resource
  • sampling
  • spatial
  • spatially-dependent
  • trace
  • united-states
  • variable
isopen True
license_id cc-by
license_title Creative Commons Attribution
license_url http://www.opendefinition.org/licenses/cc-by
maintainer Charles Nye
maintainer_email cnye3@uwyo.edu
metadata_created 2025-11-22T01:13:15.134379
metadata_modified 2025-11-22T01:13:15.134383
notes The project team collected and analyzed 224 water samples and 101 matching rock samples. INL's improved method of measuring aqueous REEs allows study of samples previously thought too volume limited to measure. The study found that aqueous REEs occur at trace levels in all analyzed samples, and sometimes exceed ocean REE concentrations by a factor of 1,000. No significant predictive relationship to lithology, reservoir temperature, nor salinity was discovered, but aqueous REE concentration appears spatially controlled. Future work is needed to find the spatially-dependent variable that controls aqueous REE concentration.
num_resources 1
num_tags 29
title Assessing REE Concentrations in Geothermal and Oil and Gas Produced Waters: A Potential Domestic Source of Strategic Mineral Commodities