Unlocking seismic data could aid the search for fresh groundwater in Africa, where water scarcity affects two-thirds of the population.
In Tanzania, a geological exploration hunting for water seemed doomed to failure until Fridtjov Ruden, one of the hydrogeologists on the project, had an unorthodox idea.
Instead of drilling blindly or assessing only the top layer of earth, he turned to the wealth of geological data from the oil industry to pinpoint where freshwater might be stored underground.
What he discovered was almost too good to be true: after months of fruitless drilling, the seismic information, a sort of x-ray of the earth, revealed that freshwater was right there – just a little deeper than he had been searching.
Encouraged by the finding, Ruden pushed his team to drill three new boreholes, each extending down to 600 metres. This time, water gushed forth.
“Everyone got excited because this was the discovery of an aquifer that no one knew existed,” says Elizabeth Quiroga Jordan, a petroleum engineer at Ruden AS, the company that Ruden founded together with his daughter Helene Ree four years later.
The aquifer, it turned out, was vast enough to provide water for 2 million people for more than a century.
The crucial discovery illustrates a potentially game-changing solution to slash the cost of fixing Africa’s most excruciating problem: the lack of clean water.
Water scarcity is an insidious problem that affects 1.34 billion people across Africa, approximately two-thirds of the population, triggering a cascade of consequences.
People in water-poor countries are not only more subject to deadly contagions and higher poverty levels, they are also more at risk of conflict and forced displacement.
Getting hold of oil industry data
The upside of harnessing existing data from petroleum companies to map deep aquifers and address Africa’s water crisis is clear. Reduced costs and shorter timelines would represent a huge gain for water exploration projects, especially considering that the industry doesn’t have the kind of resources oil and gas do.
Helene Ree Ruden pivoted from a career in the media industry to assist her father in strengthening the business side of their venture. She explains that her goal is “to drag [oil companies] into this water world where people are still walking around with sticks trying to find water.”
“When they have drilled down to 5,000 metres and there is no oil, they would just say that it’s a dry well, even if it is full of freshwater,” she adds.
Accessing this treasure trove of data, however, is far from straightforward. As Ruden’s team quickly realised after securing a tender from the Norwegian government to scout for water in Somalia, a region with geological features similar to Tanzania.
“What Norway didn’t know is that to execute this project, you need the oil information, and the oil data is in the hands of the Petroleum Ministry,” said Quiroga Jordan.
Negotiations to secure this data required a carefully orchestrated charm offensive to “make the Minister of Petroleum understand that we were not looking for oil.” Ultimately, it took three years for the data to be shared.
According to Abbe Brown, a professor of intellectual property specialising in the energy sector at the University of Aberdeen, persuading oil and gas companies to share their seismic data remains a legal gambit.
“It is pretty rare for a country to make people share information at national and also international level,” Brown says.
Still, there are signs of progress. In countries like the UK and Canada, regulators have recently pushed to make such data more accessible by shortening the time before it becomes public, she explains.
But these attempts were promptly met by a wave of litigations, highlighting the future challenges that companies like Ruden AS could face.
Pumping groundwater: a real solution for Africa?
As climate change, a quickly rising population, and inadequate water management systems conspire to make freshwater ever-rarer in the future, pumping groundwater from wells may no longer be a luxury.
In the 2010s, scientists found abundant underground aquifers crisscrossing the water-stricken continent, spurring hopes about this water source.
However, experts caution that underground water alone would not be a silver bullet.
Gaathier Mahed, a senior lecturer at the Nelson Mandela University in South Africa and a groundwater and aquifer expert, has pointed out that several factors determine the extent to which aquifers can help meet communities’ needs.
These include the proximity of the aquifer to the areas of demand, water quality, and infrastructure availability.
Another challenge is that even when these elements align, there’s a persistent risk of mismanagement or overpumping, which could put these life-supporting water reserves at risk.
But in the face of recurring droughts, the need for more durable, systemic solutions is undeniable. “You cannot keep sending humanitarian assistance to things that you know will keep happening every year when you know there are more long-term solutions to fix it,” argues Quiroga Jordan.
