For years, the oil and gas industry has been working to find new ways to manage and reuse the millions of barrels of water produced alongside oil and gas in the Permian Basin. This week, industry leaders, researchers and policymakers gathered in Midland with encouraging signs that those efforts are increasingly moving from research to reality, strengthening the industry’s ability to responsibly develop one of the nation’s most important energy-producing regions.
The developments highlighted at the 11th Annual Produced Water Society Permian Basin Conference demonstrate how innovation is changing the equation, creating new opportunities to turn produced water into a valuable resource while addressing growing constraints on traditional disposal.
The need for those solutions is becoming increasingly urgent. According to Brady Murphy, president and CEO of TETRA Technologies, the Permian Basin currently produces about 21 million barrels of water per day, a figure expected to reach 28 million barrels per day by 2036. At the same time, rising water volumes, increased formation pressures and fewer permits for new disposal wells are putting pressure on existing disposal capacity. Finding new ways to manage that water will be increasingly important to sustaining production in a basin that has become indispensable to U.S. energy security.
Large-Scale Solutions Are Taking Shape
The good news: the industry is not waiting for those constraints to become a crisis.
This week, Texas Pacific Land and Texas Pacific Water Resources opened a first-of-its-kind treatment and research facility in Orla capable of treating up to 10,000 barrels of produced water per day. The facility will study how treated produced water can be used for agriculture, land restoration, construction and other applications, including irrigating a 20-acre land rehabilitation site.
Texas State Sen. Charles Perry, who has championed efforts to develop new water supplies in the state, called the opportunity a “two-for” that could address both produced water management and Texas’ growing need for water.
“It solves a major issue with the oil and gas industry, which drives Texas, which drives the country…and it’s a solution that works for a lot of different reasons.”
That is what makes progress on produced water so consequential. Expanding reuse could simultaneously address a growing operational challenge, create new water resources and help sustain the Permian production that powers economies far beyond West Texas.
Other technologies are showing similarly promising results. TETRA Technologies recently completed a commercial pilot of its Oasis Total Desalination Solution in the Delaware Basin that achieved a 92 percent recovery rate, producing desalinated water with total dissolved solids levels between 40 and 200 parts per million.
Beneficial Reuse Could Unlock New Opportunities
Researchers are also exploring an expanding range of uses for treated produced water, including agriculture, industrial applications, rangeland restoration and aquifer recharge. The Texas Produced Water Consortium, created by the state legislature in 2021, is working to advance the science needed to determine how treated and desalinated produced water can be safely put to beneficial use.
And water may not be the only resource that can be recovered. Murphy noted that Permian produced water contains minerals including lithium, bromide, iodine, calcium, magnesium and manganese. With millions of barrels of produced water generated every day, recovering even relatively small concentrations of these minerals could create another opportunity to extract value from what was once viewed primarily as a waste stream. Together, these emerging applications underscore how technological advances are creating opportunities to do more with the resources already being produced in the Permian.
Bottom Line: Produced water and reuse is a challenge the industry is facing head-on. While it remains one of the Permian Basin’s most pressing operational challenges, the progress highlighted in Midland shows how innovation can turn that challenge into opportunity. As treatment, desalination and beneficial reuse technologies move toward larger-scale deployment, they can reduce disposal needs, create new water resources and help sustain oil and gas production.
For a basin that plays an outsized role in U.S. energy security and the nation’s ability to meet growing energy demand at home and abroad, solving the produced water challenge is about far more than water management. It is about ensuring the Permian can continue delivering the affordable, reliable energy Americans and our allies depend on.
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