Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Geoforum journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/geoforum Irrigating underground: Assembling, disassembling, and reassembling the hydraulic fracturing energy-water nexus Adrianne Kroepsch Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences Division, Colorado School of Mines, 1500 Illinois Street, Golden, CO 80401, USA ARTICLEINFO Keywords: Hydraulic fracturing Fracking Energy-water nexus Assemblage Water governance Infrastructure ABSTRACT This paper explores how a novel and water-intensive method of energy production – high-volume hydraulic fracturing (a.k.a., “fracking” or “fracing”) – has taken hold in a river basin that is over-appropriated, is managed via a water governance regime that did not anticipate hydraulic fracturing's idiosyncrasies, and where public concern about dedicating freshwater to hydrocarbon production is high. Via a grounded examination of hy- draulic fracturing water use in Colorado’s busiest oilfield and most crowded river basin, I argue that the practice has come to exist – and persist – despite these countervailing forces because it is an ephemeral energy-water assemblage. It is always in motion, is tough to monitor, and emerges only to disappear and reemerge again. This shape-shifting capacity distinguishes hydraulic fracturing from better-known energy-water couplings such as the hydroelectric dam and from historical surface irrigation practices in the American West. It also has con- sequences. While the uncritical energy-water literature suggests that these energy-water relations have been sufficiently characterized by volumetric gallons-per-well estimates, and the physical ephemerality of the hy- draulic fracturing assemblage keeps its on-the-ground complexities elusive, an abridged and uncomplicated picture of hydraulic fracturing endures in the academic literature and public discourse. The partial under- standings that result make this assemblage simpler to produce and reproduce. This study responds to calls for more nuanced analyses of energy-water relations. It also contributes to assemblage theory by examining the relationship between instability and stability in the lives of an assemblage, which underscores the importance of processes of disassembly and reassembly within assemblage-style analyses. 1. Introduction: irrigating underground In late 2015, a pulse of several million gallons of water coursed down Ditch No. 3 on the edge of the city of Greeley in northeastern Colorado. It ran toward the hydraulic fracturing crew at a busy pad of several recently drilled oil and natural gas wells, where it was destined for injection to a depth of nearly 8,000 feet to mobilize the hydro- carbons within the Niobrara and Codell formations. By virtue of tra- veling Ditch No. 3, the water ran a historic path. The canal was the first of several ditches dug by Greeley’s European-American colonists in the 1870s to bring water from a tributary of the South Platte River to the community and its fields (Fig. 1). It is also the irrigation ditch that inspired the Prior Appropriation Doctrine for water governance in Colorado, which follows a “first in time, first in right” logic, and which underpins water law across the American West to this day (Schorr, 2012). The historic canal had channeled many water flows in its 145 years, but river water slated for hydraulic fracturing was a novel variety. Indeed, the water that moved through Ditch No. 3 was part of an unexpected and controversial coupling of energy and water resources focused on irrigating the Earth’s subsurface rather than its surface in a semi-arid region. This particular energy-water nexus, which involves repeatedly injecting a fluid mixture underground to coax oil and gas from tight geologic formations, has yet to be fully explored in the academic literature and is the subject of this paper. The primary objective of this analysis is to explain how this energy- water assemblage has come to exist – and persist – despite many social and material forces working against it. I ask how this water-based method of energy production has taken hold in a river basin that is already extremely over-appropriated, that is managed via a water governance regime that did not anticipate hydraulic fracturing’s idio- syncrasies, and where public concern about the use of freshwater for hydrocarbon production is high (Boone et al., 2018; Oikonomou et al., 2016; Weible and Heikkila, 2016). Illuminating the workings of this energy-water nexus is important because of the global rise of un- conventional oil and gas development, which depends upon high-vo- lume hydraulic fracturing (Haggerty, 2017; a.k.a., “fracking” or “fra- cing”) and, therefore, the extensive use of water. The questions that motivate this analysis are relevant in Colorado and water-stressed areas https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2019.04.028 Received 6 July 2018; Received in revised form 23 April 2019; Accepted 29 April 2019 E-mail address: akroepsch@mines.edu. Geoforum xxx (xxxx) xxx–xxx 0016-7185/ © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Please cite this article as: Adrianne Kroepsch, Geoforum, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2019.04.028