Waste Disposal and Thank you Geodude for the update on Waste Disposal. Very comprehensive.
Waterflood has been successully used in shale oil to improve recoveries. As a result, the simpliest solution may be to re-inject the produced water into the Canol rather than another formation. Maintaining the pressure helps force out the oil As you have zone integrity will be important.
I don't believe there are swelling clays. Clay content in the Canol is very low (less than 5%). It is almost pure silica. I believe it is biosilica from the algae blooms that occured in the Devonian times. This is what produce the organic content (TOC) which was heated to form oil.
The Canol is an unusually good canditate for fracturing because it is extremely brittle. It should shatter like glassand those spiderweb like fractures will exposing more of the shale matrix to high permeability fracture filled with sand which can carry the oil to the well bore.
I am hoping for oil recovery rates similar to the Bakken and Eagle Ford (5-10%). If you want to see a very optimistic appraisal of a shale oil deposit, check out Trilogy's Montney project. They are booking 10% as proved and 20% probably with a possibility of 24% recoveries. Wow. MGM would be making boat loads of money then.