Oil producers in the Permian Basin of Texas and New Mexico are looking for alternate ways to dispose of the huge amounts of water used in their horizontal hydraulic fracturing operations, April Reese reports for Searchlight New Mexico.
"For every barrel of oil produced in the Permian, about four barrels of this 'produced water' come out of the earth with it. In 2018 alone, New Mexico’s share of the Permian Basin generated 42 billion gallons of oil and gas wastewater, according to the New Mexico Environment Department," Reese writes. "For years, companies simply dumped the contaminated wastewater into disposal wells. Now, there’s keen interest in reusing that water for drilling — and even for other, more controversial purposes."
Wastewater recycling is the most popular alternative in the arid state, "but others contend that the water is too contaminated to ever be anything but waste," and recycling is too expensive.
"As divided as New Mexicans might be on the prospect of reusing produced water beyond oil fields," Reese writes, they agree on two things: Southeastern New Mexico is headed for a water crisis, and oil and gas production is resulting in increasing volumes of wastewater. . . . the constant flow of freshwater needed for fracking is ever harder to come by in this parched region, which receives only about 13 inches of precipitation a year."
"For every barrel of oil produced in the Permian, about four barrels of this 'produced water' come out of the earth with it. In 2018 alone, New Mexico’s share of the Permian Basin generated 42 billion gallons of oil and gas wastewater, according to the New Mexico Environment Department," Reese writes. "For years, companies simply dumped the contaminated wastewater into disposal wells. Now, there’s keen interest in reusing that water for drilling — and even for other, more controversial purposes."
Wastewater recycling is the most popular alternative in the arid state, "but others contend that the water is too contaminated to ever be anything but waste," and recycling is too expensive.
"As divided as New Mexicans might be on the prospect of reusing produced water beyond oil fields," Reese writes, they agree on two things: Southeastern New Mexico is headed for a water crisis, and oil and gas production is resulting in increasing volumes of wastewater. . . . the constant flow of freshwater needed for fracking is ever harder to come by in this parched region, which receives only about 13 inches of precipitation a year."
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